


in the fire and the flood

by pigeonfancier



Series: BRIGHT AS THE MORNING SUN [3]
Category: The Blackout Club (Video Game)
Genre: American Sign Language, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, Gen, Multiracial Character, Native American Character(s), Possession, Racism, Religious Cults
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 63,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/pigeonfancier
Summary: “Because he wants you dead! Same as your damn Thee-I-Dare’s gonna build up to, same as In-Her-Teeth, same as the rest of ‘em.” Her voice’s raising, higher and higher, but she can’t bring herself to care. Everyone’s looking at her now, eyes wide, the lights catching on ‘em in the darkness. “A tick only cares about getting fed. Sure, it don’t want you dead, but d’you think it’ll cry, once it’s finally bled you dry?”Set two months afterA FIRE IN THE DARK,Anya Littlefeather attempts to adjust to living with the Blackout Club. But when kids begin investigating the Old Tongue, the root of all language, children begin dying, and she discovers the truth of her father's family, Anya begins to realise that not all secrets need to be uncovered.. and maybe there's some information out there that she just doesn't want to know.
Series: BRIGHT AS THE MORNING SUN [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787071
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. In Which Anya Discovers the Importance of Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> The following characters have been lovingly borrowed from my writing group:
> 
>   * XAVIUL NEPTUNE: belongs to xav1ul@twitter 
>   * ARCHER: belongs to skegulium@twitter 
>   * ASTRO / HADAR IVANNEKO: belongs to kidskylark@twitter
> 

> 
> Thanks for letting me bastardise your creations! Heart emoji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the sequel to **[A FIRE IN THE DARK!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18054875)** This fic is probably my narrative love-song to my two favorite things: every horror novel that I binged on as a kid, and the themes of the Blackout Club. The entire fic came from the fact that the character I play in-game, Lavanya, is essentially nothing like Anya, the protagonist of the first fic, and I wanted to bridge that gap.
> 
> Which derailed aggressively, as always. 
> 
> All content is typical to that in the game: there is no detailed gore, and the horror is largely psychological. Anya's parents were teen parents, but this exists exclusively as an aside: adolescent pregnancy is unfortunately common enough in the Appalachias that I wanted to reference it, but the story does not dig into it. The story does deal with teenagers struggling with cultural and ethnic identities, deals with syncretinism in how individuals combine their faith with the presence - and demands - of the Voices - and some very, thoroughly unreliable narrators, as well as general gaslighting.
> 
> Projected story length is about 130k - chapters are ending up at 9k on average, and there are 13 planned, assuming that I don't need to split any further ones. This may end up shorter. It will hopefully not end up longer. But it is a slowburn story. Sorry not sorry about that!

For Anya's thirteenth birthday, she'd spent it out in the woods, teaching herself how to shoot a slingshot and mostly failing at hitting the cans that she'd stacked up by the trees. Shooting a pistol was easy, but slingshots were a different beast entirely: each pebble had a different weight, and each shot meant she had to figure out how to shoot it all over again.

She'd managed to knock over four of the ten cans by the time the sun had started to set. When she'd headed home, her ma had brought out pop, and laid out a pie with the stores label still on it, and Xaviul had been ready with a gift for her the next time she'd shown up at school.

It had been the first year that her grandfather's absence didn't feel gaping. By then, Anya had gotten used to it being just her and her ma in the trailer, and just her and Xaviul at the school. She’d grown used to the solitude of the woods, and she’d come to find it comforting.

This year, she spends it in the woods, but for the first time since her grandfather died, she ain’t alone in them.

The Blackout Club lives in the woods. There's three boxcars strung together, all in a line, that they've claimed as their living space, far enough away from the old railways that Anya has to half-wonder how they got out here. Most of the carts are in pretty decent enoough repair, all things considered: the rails haven’t run for years and years, and these haven’t seen work for longer still, but they’re livable. The paint's peeling, and the metal's rusting, but that’s no worse than her house, and she’d grown up watching her grandfather repair it, year after year, every time a storm blew through and tried to blow a part of it away.

She doesn’t have her grandfather’s skills. She ain’t got his tools, either, but she can fix little problems, one at a time, like the holes that dot the largest boxcar’s roof. For this birthday, there’s no pie. There ain’t even a cupcake. It's just her and Xaviul, sitting on the boxcar in the middle of the woods, their legs resting just short of spilling over the edges, as Anya weaves willow sprigs together.

She’d spent the last week collecting branches from the willows in the woods, and yesterday, she’d spent all evening soaking them in the river. Now, with the starlight to guide her, they’re finally supple enough to work. Other trees break if you try to bend them, but willow's the best kind of tree: as long as it's got water in it, it just adapts. 

"Like the club," Xaviul offers, and she snorts.

"The club is fucking beech. When it gets wet, it molds. When things get tough.." She's weaving the branches together, careful and slow. Xaviul passes her twine on occasion, but for the most part, he’s just watching, his eyes admiring. It’s a nice way to spend the night, she thinks.

"It breaks," she sniffs, and sets her plank down, gentle, on the roof. She guessed right enough on her measurements: the plank of branches that she's woven together are just big enough to cover the gap in the roof up here, but when she slides it into place, hooking it into the exposed struts, it's not quite perfect. The edges stick out like a toddler’s fingers, or like they’re calling for some big bird to come and drag them away.

"We're gonna need a knife," she complains, pulling it loose and setting it down next to her.

Xaviul clears his throat, a little  _ a-hem _ that demands her attention. And when she looks at him, he’s holding out one.

It isn't like one of her granddad's. Anya's ma had gotten rid of those first thing after he'd died: piled them up high in a box, and slapped her hand when she'd tried to filch some. "Ain't nobody got a need for these, girl," her ma had said, thin lipped, "and he knew it. Redacre is perfectly safe."

Her ma had been wrong. Redacre wasn't safe, and Anya had ruined a good third of their kitchen knives trying to skin critters, besides.

The little pigpoker that Xaviul's holding out has nothing on her grandfathers, but it's still a knife. The folding kind, with a shiny white case, and - when he flicks his thumb - three separate blades, all with different edges, and even a little different in size. She whistles, reaching out. "Did your ma get you that?"

"No. My mom would never. It's for you," he says. "For your projects. I figured it might help. It's got a note on it, too. I would have gotten a card, but.. my parents would've gotten suspicious."

There's a little post-it on the other side of it. She unfolds it carefully, and maybe it'd be smarter to step inside, where some of the kids have hooked up lanterns to the ceiling of the boxcars, but she doesn't. She just squints at the note instead, trying to form the letters in the moonlight, and reads:

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I wish we could have gotten you a cake, but you deserve a gift anyway. Have fun.**

**PS: you can't use this on people.**

"Why," she says, icy, "would I use this on people?"

Xaviul's cheeks mottle. "Not even if they're grabbing you, or you think they might hurt you," he says, a little sheepish, but still firm. "Not even! That could be someone's grandma. Projects only, Anya."

"But -"

"Someone's  _ grandma _ ," he repeats, firmer, and how can she object to that? He's right. Xaviul's almost always right.

So she just starts sawing at the plug, instead, and she listens to him talk.

* * *

The kids call the little group that she’s gone and joined the Blackout Club. It's a collection of all of the runaways and strays of Redacre: ones who, like Anya, learned about the secrets their parents hiding and the truth of the town, and who chose to flee from it. She’s never had a blackout, not like the rest of the kids talk about: times when they’d closed their eyes for sleep or to blink, and they’d opened them to find themselves across the town, with blood on their clothes or people claiming they’d done things that they’d never even planned on doing.

Least, she’s never remembered one.

But the rest of the kids have. That, and their knowledge, are the unifying factor of the club. It’s the only unifying factor, as far as she can tell, ‘cause otherwise..

It’s been two long months since August, and since Xaviul led her to the boxcar, and she’s still not sure how she feels about the other residents. There’s fifty or so kids here that all wander in and out, and thirty that just sleep here. Xav keeps calling it tiny, like a miniature school. Anya doesn’t know much about school, but she knows hasn’t been around this many folks at once since she was  _ ten _ .

She can’t keep ‘em straight to save her life, especially when half of ‘em are from Upper Hoadley.

Oh, she's picked up some names, but she hasn't talked to any of them. There hasn't been a point, not when it feels like all the other kids already know each other. They've all grown up with each other, tussling in the playgrounds, working together in class. Even back when she was in school on the regular, Anya was never much one for socialising. The other kids had felt nearly foreign, and they'd certainly viewed her as it.

They still act like she is now, and if she’s honest, every strange look just makes all the more mulish about talking to ‘em.

Talking to ‘em, or interacting much, beyond what she has to. It just makes sleeping in the boxcar, instead of the woods, that much more queer. The air smells like Lysol, and bodies, and dirt, 'cause half the kids just tumble straight into their sleeping bags after they get in, never mind so much as wiping down.

Anya keeps her sleeping bag right next to Xaviul's. It means when he's awake,  _ she's  _ awake, and she doesn't have to worry about him getting stolen off on a mission. She trusts him. She just doesn't trust any of the other kids with him, she thinks, not when she's seen them limping in with blood on their knees and intel that wasn't worth any of it.

She's supposed to wake up when he does, at least, but the night after her birthday, when she sits up, pushing her hair out of her face, his sleeping bag is empty. And his laptop is gone. There's voices in the main boxcar, high and lilting enough for even her to catch, but none of those sound like his. When she stands up, something on her pillow crinkles. It's a post it note.

**"Went out to take pictures of the cryptograms,"** it says, in her friends soft, looping hand. He writes everything out plain for her to read, but it still always looks fancy.  **"Will be back soon! Don't worry!"**

She's worrying as she drags a brush through her hair, hard jerks that don't do anything to sweeten her mood. She's worrying as she pulls on new clothes, ones that don't smell off - not every kid  _ bothers _ , out here, but Anya likes to think she was raised right.

She's worrying when she steps out into the main boxcar, and later, she'll admit:  _ that's  _ why she takes the bait. 

_ "Annie!"  _ Tommy calls out, smug, and at least this gives her something new to worry about.

Tommy Sato is like a boulder in the river: the current of the boxcar's social life parts around him, and occasionally, he rolls over and diverts it all. Xaviul had laughed when she'd told him that, but Tommy’s even polished like it, with gleaming teeth and red curls and clothes that he gets clean from home every evening. Tommy's one of the kids that hasn't run away.

He's too skilled for that, listening to him talk. His parents have no idea where he goes each night, no idea what he does each day, so long as he's making good grades. And he does. Anya's seen his report cards. He's  _ shown  _ her them, in one of his false shows of friendliness, and then he'd asked about hers, with that stupid, gleaming grin, and -

If he's a rock, then he's about as thick headed as one. Because she doesn't like him at all, but all he does is keep trying to nettle.

"My name's  _ Anya _ ," she corrects him, stiff.

"Aren't I saying that?" Around him, the other kids titter. He's sitting on top of one of the tables, letting his legs swing, and there's easily a dozen kids all grouped up around him. Some of them, Anya recognises loosely. Tiffany with the dark eyes. Joe, who's always on his phone, some big brick that his father bought him outside of Redacre. Bambi, who's got moles all over, and barely any skin to see under them.

They’re all kids that Xaviul calls friends, but Anya’s never been jealous of the easy way that he gets along with folks. He’s like a dog, but not one of the hunting hounds: he’s the easy sort, the labradors that she’s seen in town, with soft eyes and big, gentle bodies that always seem to ache to be pet. Of course folks love being around him. How could they not?

She just gets sour when it comes down to Tommy. Everyone seems to adore him, with his sharp edges and his sharper tongue, just because he’s one of the brightest in the boxcar - like they think if they bask in the light he reflects, it’ll  _ do _ something. He’s always mocking, but folks don’t seem to  _ care,  _ even when it’s aimed at them.

The only one who ever cares, it feels like, is her. And what turns it from a sour taste in her mouth to downright  _ intolerable  _ is the fact the both of ‘em know it.

“C’mon! Pull up a chair, we’re having a town hall,” he says now, all warm and smug. “Bambi said she had a dream. Right, Bamb?”

Bambi opens her mouth. She’s saying something, Anya realises, but her voice’s so quiet that she can’t hear a word, and the boxcar’s so dim, Anya can’t read her lips, no matter how much she squints.

Tommy looks at her, pulling his mouth to the side, then, bright: “- you gonna sit all the way back there, Annie? Well, okay. C’mon, Bamb, can you speak up? That way everyone can hear -”

She hates him so  _ much _ .

“I dreamed,” Bambi says, her voice still quiet, but Anya can make out the words now, just barely. “I dreamed, and, um - I was a girl, I guess, and I was a kid, but I was.. an old kid. Like, in college kind of old, but not..” She’s winding her curls around a finger. “Not super old, you know? Not our parents age. And I had parents, and I had siblings. A lot of siblings. Like, six.”

“And I loved them. I loved them a lot! But my parents didn’t love me, and my parents were - they weren’t very nice, either, or smart.”

Tommy snorts. “Everyone over eighteen gets a flat debuff on int,” he says. “It’s just a fucking fact.”

There’s a ghost of a smile on Bambi’s face. “So I was always trying to help them out,” she says, and her voice’s gaining confidence. “I was running the house, and I was watching my siblings, and I was - they kept food on the table, but they didn’t do much else, so I was having to do it. And I was changing things, so it was easier for everyone, and no one appreciated it. No one at all. And it sucked.”

“So I was scared, but..” She shrugs, leaning back against the table, and draws her knees up to her chest. “I told them it sucked,” she says, “and I told them that they sucked, and all the ways why, and then I woke up.”

The other kids are nodding. Tommy sucks on his teeth, thoughtful. “Thanks for sharing, Bamb,” he says, warm. “Okay! That’s interesting. What d’you think it means?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses, then offers, hesitant: “Parents suck?”

“Well, yeah. They do! Anyone else have ideas, though? Because that doesn’t sound like a dream dream. That sounds like,” he says, dropping his voice into a melodramatic boom, "it's supposed to be _ telling us something!" _

It's been two months since Anya fell in with the Blackout Club, and what she's come to realise is this: at night, everyone hears voices in their heads.

They're called the Daimons, by a lot of the kids. That, or voices, or  _ gods _ . You’ll feel something tickling at the edge of your vision, like dust, or sweat, or tears - and when you close your eyes to try and knock it away, you see something. Words across your vision, or  _ images, _ sometimes, of a man that ain’t a man at all.

Sometimes. Some folks hear voices instead, like they’re talking to themself in their heads, but _different_. And some folks..

Everyone dreams, if they let themselves. Anya forgets hers, mostly, and she tries to ignore the ones she can't, drowns them out with music, or swimming, or whatever will get the blood rushing loud enough that she can’t hear anything else after. Because when kids dream at night, out in the boxcar, they usually ain’t real dreams. They’ll close their eyes, and the daimons will begin to talk, in whatever form they want to talk in.

It’s become a hobby for most of the kids, the last month or so, to gather around and talk about the strangest of ‘em. When they’re lucky, the daimons just talk in words, plain and sweet as any song. For the most part, though, it’s up to the club members to try and figure out what they’re trying to say, and why they said that.

Xaviul's one of the kids obsessed with it. She's seen him hunched over his laptop with the fluffy haired brunette - Archer, she thinks - sorting through page after page of notes that they’ve taken on the other kids dreams, trying to find patterns, trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be  _ knowing. _

She hadn't thought Tommy was one, though.

"I don't see what they'd be telling us," Tiffany drawls, wrinkling her nose. "They don't have family. Or parents."

"S-A-O -” They never say the daimon that leads CHORUS’s name out loud, if they can help it. To speak a daimon’s name is to call their attention, and they’ve hidden away in the woods just to escape it. “- that one’s everyone's parent," Bambi says, with a sidelong look. "Aren't they?"

"They can't be anyone's parent. They're not a person. They can't have kids. It’s just a.. a..” Tiffan’ys leaning forward, puffing out her cheeks as she tries to think. “A metaphor!” she finally crows, triumphant: “- it’s just a metaphor, fucker, they’re not really somebody’s parents. Or, like, it’s a church thing. _ Oh, holy father, art thou in heaven -- _ ”

“That’s kind of offensive,” Tommy says, amused. “C’mon, Tiff. You’re gonna get us struck by lightning.” 

“We’re talking about fucking fake-ass gods in our head. I’m pretty sure  _ all  _ of this would get us in trouble with the priests.” She pauses. “D’you think that they’re all fake?” she asks. “Or, like,  _ demons? _ They say they’re gods, but I mean, so does everything, in the movies, and then you find out, no, the ouija board’s actually just linking you up to Satan --”

Everyone in the boxcar tonights’ interested in dreams, apparently.

They’re all so talkative, with voices that keep flickering in and out of her hearing range. If Anya keeps an eye on their lips, it goes fine, but that means she keeps having to turn her head, and there’s something frustrating in that. She edges back, just a step. There’s a gap between the two boxcars, the main one and the place where they all sleep. Most of the kids just head out the front door, but that’d mean walking into the thick of the crowd.

If she wants to go head off into the woods, she doesn’t need to do that. She could just slip out right between ‘em -

“I don’t think that’s right,” Tommy says again, his voice bright and loud enough that it cuts neatly through the din of chatter. “I don’t think they’re demons. I think they’re just voices. And to get back to Bambi’s dream.. I think it does have a meaning!”

“I think it means they want us to realise our parents are just  _ using  _ us," he says. "They don't want what's best for us! They just want some perfect little cookie cutter dolls to dress up, and stand around, and use us, like we're extras from the Matrix. And whoever sent that dream is just telling us - we don't have to take it! We don't have to take it at  _ all _ ."

"But that's just  _ my  _ take. I want to hear all of yours! Annie," he says suddenly, so sharp that she feels like she's been pinned to a board: "- Annie, what do you think?"

She’s half-way out the boxcar, one foot on the grass. When she oozes, reluctantly, back to the wood, everyone is just staring at her, two or three dozen fucking eyes all honed in on her.

Tommy is leaning back on the table. His smile gleams in the light

"I think," she says, slow, "you're fucking insane if you think any of that's supposed to help us.”

And his grin widens.

She  _ hates him. _

“They want to help us,” he argues, leaning forward, and with how eager he looks, she thinks he must’ve been waiting for a chance to bait her this whole damn  _ time. _

“They want to use us,” she shoots back, and suddenly tired of standing, she stalks forward. Back at home, there’d been a fridge, and the sort of food that kept well cold. Here, all they had was the boxes and boxes of shit that kids had nicked from their parents homes, or the stores, but there’s only so many times that she could stand eating jerky for breakfast, so she grabs one of the dried up trail bars instead.

It’s hard as a rock when she bites into it, but she forces herself to chew. Least Xaviul jokes it’s good for their teeth.

“Use us for _ what?  _ Look, some of them obviously are pretty fucking bad news. No one’s pretending, like,  _ Big Tooth _ up there is here to be your friend,” he says, amused. Tommy's expressive to a fault! Other kids roll their eyes. He rolls his entire head back on his shoulders, so obvious that some of the other kids standing around titter.

And then he grins at her, wide enough to flash gums, like they aren’t arguing.

“But the rest of them? Thee-I-Dare? He cares about us. And Die-for-You.. he really wants us to stay safe! They’re our _ friends.”  _ Behind him, Anya can see one of the boy’s eyebrows furrowing. But a girl is nodding, and she’s not the only one in the crowd that seems to agree.

Anya stares at him. Her cheeks feel warm, suddenly, but she doesn’t let her voice shake. “His name is _ Die-for-You,”  _ she says, very calmly. “‘course he wants you to stay  _ safe.” _

“See -”

“He doesn’t want you to fall off a  _ cliff _ ,” she continues, right on top of him, “or get hurt by a  _ lucid _ , or accidentally get  _ septis _ , ‘cause what would that do for  _ him _ ? It doesn’t count for nothin’ at all unless you’re doing it for someone. So he wants you to go falling off a cliff  _ for someone _ . He wants you to all strangled out, because you’re  _ saving  _ something. If you’re gonna get  _ septis _ , then you’d better make sure you’re getting septis for, like,  _ a cause,  _ because otherwise, he doesn’t get  _ anything  _ out of it at all.”

“Oh, come on -”

“Because he wants you _ dead!  _ Same as your damn Thee-I-Dare’s gonna build up to, same as  _ In-Her-Teeth, _ same as _ the rest of ‘em. _ ” Her voice’s raising, higher and higher, but she can’t bring herself to care. Everyone’s looking at her now, eyes wide, the lights catching on ‘em in the darkness. “A tick only cares about _ getting fed. _ Sure, it don’t want you dead, but d’you think it’ll cry, once it’s finally bled you dry?”

He’s not grinning anymore.

"Look, Annie,” he says, bored, like he’s talking down a kid, “the Voices are fine. You're just fucking paranoid, okay?"

_ Annie. _

"D’you want to call me Annie again?" Anya says, the words slow as syrup, and she steps around the table, just like that. Her fists are balled at her sides. Tommy's heavier than her, but only by twenty pounds or so, the way she reckons it. And winning doesn't matter so much. She can shrug off pain. The bruises around her neck are proof enough to that: she’d gotten grabbed by a lucid on her last mission, and he’d been so furious, mud dripping off of his face, that he’d wrapped both hands around her throat before one of the other kids had intervened.

That had  _ hurt. _ It’d hurt to talk, in the day after, and it still hurt now, but she’d walked it off. But the lucid had had a hundred pounds on her, and Tommy’s barely got twenty. 

Anya doesn't have to win. All it'll take is one good hit to make a point, and he's too stupid to even realise it. He's stepping forward, rolling his shoulders back, showing all of his teeth like he doesn't expect her to knock one out. "Dude," he drawls, "are you gonna focus on the name, and not, like, our actual argument here? You're just Annie of Green Gables." He spreads out his hands in front of him, gesturing. "I thought that was the entire point of, y'know, the two braids: you're cosplaying a country hick, right? Or, shit, is that supposed to be serious?"

She's going to knock out several teeth, she decides, and she's going to put them on a necklace after. Anya had had thoughts of taking this outdoors, but - all around them, the other kids are just watching, eyes wide in the dim of the boxcar. They're out of the way. And she's not going to give him the dignity of room to actually fight.

No, she's just going to step forward -

\- and someone lays a hand flat on her shoulder. "Hey," someone says, their voice familiar. "¿Que cojones estás haciendo? Are you fighting?"

"We're not fighting," Tommy lies, easy.

"We're about to be," Anya snaps, and he laughs, holding up his hands.

"Wow, okay, tough girl!  _ I'm  _ not fighting, but I guess Annie's planning on roughing me the fuck up, here." He drags a hand through his hair. “Can you at least aim for the belly?” he asks, earnest. “I don’t want to mess up my face.” 

“Call me Annie  _ one more time - _ " Some folks, when they get mad, they claim everything just goes black. But It's not like that for her. Right now, she's aware of everything: the steady, furious throb of her heart, the amused creases under Tommy's eyes, the way everyone's watching, the exact number of steps between them - 

\- and the girl that suddenly steps right into the way.

She's older, Anya immediately realises, for all that she's shorter. Moon pale, with big eyes and bigger ears, and a button nose that’s all scrunched up right now as she looks between her and Tommy. "Stop that," she tells him, scolding, and he drops his laugh, but not his smile. "Stop riling her up! And no nicknames."

"Nicknames are friendly,” Tommy argues, jovial. “Like, c’mon, do you complain when your grandma calls you Dango-chan?”

"My grandmother speaks  _ Spanish,  _ Sato. _ ” _

“I know,” he says, teasing. “You won’t stop reminding us.”

“Sometimes I think you  _ want _ to get hit," the girl says with a click of her tongue, shaking her head at him. Her hair’s short enough, it doesn't even move with the gesture. "Keep it up, and Dax'll take you up on it," she warns him, and  _ that - _ that, of all things - is enough to make him wilt, his smlie dimming.

Anya doesn’t have much time to bask in it, though, because the girl’s whirling on her, quick as any snake.

"And you! New girl! No fighting in the clubhouse. If you want to scrap, you take it out into the woods, like God intended," the girl scolds.

Anya has never met anyone strongly religious. She's seen folks like that on the television. Who hasn't? But they've got one church, here, up in the woods. She's seen it, and the graveyard it looks over, but she's never seen too many folks on it.

But this girl has a cross around her neck. Anya doesn't know much, but she thinks that means she's the church going type. And that means she's  _ serious _ .

"I don't want to fight folks on the wood," she says, the words coming out slow, but firm. Behind the girl, Tommy perks back up, undeterred by her glare. "That's how you get ticks in your hair. Or stabbed by a twig. Or you roll onto a  _ copperhead _ , and then it  _ bites you." _

"What's a copperhead?" Tommy asks, fascinated. The girls eyebrows have knit right up. "Shit, is  _ that  _ a hick thing?"

Anya’s stalking right back forward when the girl grabs her by the shoulders. "Shut the fuck up, Thomas, or  _ I’ll _ hit you," she barks, and then she's steering Anya out, right through the front door of the boxcar. The crowd parts in front of her like butter to a hot knife, no hesitation.

And stepping outside feels like a balm on her poor hide. It’s so much quieter out here, the only sound the murmur of the voices echoing through aluminum behind her, and the crickets reigning rampant around her. The air smells crisper, too. Less funk. More trees.

“Go get some air,” the girl says, releasing her, and she gives her a rough pat on the shoulder. “Walk it off! For the record, kiddo, we don’t want people fighting in the clubhouse or the woods. Rule number one: save it for the Lucids.”

“Are we allowed to hit the Lucids, now?” Anya asks, eyeing her.

“No,” the girl says, brisk, and gives her a rough pat on the shoulder. “We absolutely are not. That’s what the kids call a joke, for the record, but good point of clarification, good on you for asking. What’s your name, again?”

The girl talks like a shotgun, fifty words at once. It’s a struggle just to keep on top of ‘em, and Anya thinks it might be even for folks that can hear. “Anya,” she says.

“Good to meet you, Anya. Now go walk it off.”

* * *

Daxon Gray is one of the original members of the Blackout Club. He's tall, taller than even Anya, and he's broad, and second to Xaviul, Anya thinks he might be the smartest person in the club.

He handles the electronics. He also handles the schedule, and normally, Anya's got no complaints. But tonight --

"Oh, hey. You okay?" Dax asks, when she lingers in front of him after the roundtable ends, and everyone's dispersing. That's what the kids always ask each other first, instead of saying hello:  _ are you okay, _ like just asking the question will make it true.

Like  _ any _ of them can be okay, when Redacre’s practically burning down around them, and they don’t even get ashes to mourn.

She shrugs. "Um -"

Dax is one of her favorite people in the club, because he never rushes her. He just keeps flipping through the big binder he keeps with all the clubs information. The page he settles on is one of the maps - or, more accurately, the markup over it, because it's a clear, transparent page, covered in marker, that rests over the real map.

A few months ago, Anya had never thought about what was under the town they all lived in. She had grown up on the very edge of Redacre's outer limits, in a trailer surrounded by the woods. When her grandfather was alive, she had gone into town only for school. After he died, she'd stopped going at all. She'd known the entire mountain here was riddled with the remnants of coal mining, and Anya had grown up being told that it was dangerous to walk near the cliff walls. A fellow had died there, some thirteen years back, on a night-time stroll through the woods that had led him straight into one of the old pits. He’d broken a leg and starved down there before they’d found him, and after that they'd sealed off most of the entrances, and they'd reinforced all the ceilings in the tunnels they could find, so that nothing else could fall in.

And they’d told the children that they ought to stay out of the woods, and stay away from the caves, as far as they could manage.

Anya had only learned two months ago  _ why _ . It wasn't just because the adults of Redacre had been worried for their safety. It was because they'd taken the old, abandoned mines, reinforced ‘em and stabilised ‘em, and then they'd claimed them as their own. They hadn’t blocked the old entrances at all. They’d only grown ‘em out and made ‘em safe, so that they could crawl into the belly of the town from wherever they wished, like the roots of some great tree. 

And then they’d turned the mines into an instrument to better carry the words of the vast Daimon that the town leaders worshipped, and they'd begun pouring its voice into every residents ears, as soon as they closed their eyes. You could hear it walking through the town, once you realised, and you could feel it under your heels - not the rumble of pipes, or cars traveling along the thoroughways, but the rumble caused by a thousand voices, constantly singing as one.

Telling you that you ought to Speak as One, no matter which way you might’ve felt about it normally.

You couldn't hear the song out in the woods. It was why so many of the children had fled to the boxcar, and why the rest of them had been led here by the other daimons, one way or another: so that they could hide away, safe from its influence, until they could figure out a way to either escape it entirely, or destroy it. 

Most of the kids just wanted to escape the town, and get as far away as they could. But Dax wanted to destroy it. So did Xaviul, and that's why Anya had thrown her lot in with this side of the clubhouse, with their maps of the town, and the maze, and their conspiring with the other daimons, instead of just tying their hands to the boxcar at night and plugging their ears as best as they could.

She’d thrown her lot in with them, but she hadn't quite anticipated, when she’d first come here, what that might  _ mean. _

"Are you okay?" Dax says again, looking up at her. He's got green bands on his braces. Anya's always found it easier to look at those than his face, which is square, blunt, and entirely too friendly. He reminds her of her grandfather, for all that he’s only three years older, but -  _ nicer,  _ which just makes the comparison worse.

"You have me paired with Tommy." She doesn't want to sound petulant, so she tries for crisp instead. She just sounds aggrieved, though, like her ma finding a skinning rack in the kitchen. "Me and him, we - um. Dunno if you noticed, but we don't get along." 

"Oh, is that it? Don't worry," Dax says, warm, and when he looks at her, meeting her light eyes with his warm, dark ones, she has to look away entirely. "Tommy's an ass, but he's fine on the field. He'll keep it professional."

And then he smiles at her when he says it, soft and gentle and wide enough that see it out the corner of her eye. So when Anya heads off meeting place, she's almost optimistic.

Two hours into the mission, she's dangling half off of a roof, her pockets full of hail and her arms wrapped tight around the slick bricks of the chimney. The sky had opened up thirty minutes ago, but she hadn’t thought she’d needed to pack up and go home. Tommy had told her to stay up on the roof, waiting for their signal, and that they’d be back eventually, with the package in hand.

An easy task, for the new member. An easy task, and - though he’d laughed, while he’d said it - something so simple that nobody could ever fuck it up.

They were doing all the work. All she had to do was wait for them to get back. There was just a package to pick up, and in the end, it was only rain.

It was only rain, until the sky had broken open into the worst kind of lights, and it’d started fucking hailing, and she’d been spotted by a patrolling lucid, and she’d  _ slipped. _

Thunder rolls high above her, so loud that she can feel the vibrations in her bones. Her pockets feel like they’re full of lead, not ice, her hands are skinned clean of skin, and far below, there's two Lucids milling around underneath her, hollering at her to just let go.

If she let's go, they'll catch her.

If she'll just let go, as they keep yodeling, they'll  _ help  _ her.

Anya ignores them. She knows the kind of help they mean, and she's got no interest in it. It's fine, she thinks. There's pain lacing through her palms, and shingles cutting into her hips, but she's been in worst spots. All she has to do is dangle until she can catch her breath, and dangle until the rain lets up. The hail’s a bother, but ain’t that why she’s got hair? She hadn’t thought it would get this bad, but way she reckons it, it can’t get much worse.

Her hands slip. Below her, one of the Lucids shrieks, loud enough that her head pulses with the noise, and Anya swears, kicking her legs as she tightens her grip on the chimney. The stone’s slick with water and blood, but she refuses to let it be anything but fine. She’s got nails. It’s all fine. 

"I don't need your help!" she yowls, holding it tighter, digging those nails in. There’s the furious chatter of voices behind her, and she wonders, suddenly, what she’ll do if someone gets a ladder. They could just pluck her off the side of the roof, and take her down to the maze, to do whatever they do with the children who go missing.

The thought makes her eyes burn. "Just - go away!" 

"Well, fuck," someone above her laughs, just loud enough to hear over the rain. "If you don't need help -" 

Then there's hands on the shoulders of her hoodie, digging in tight, and someone's hauling her up with all the ease of if she was just a bag of bones. Anya's hands are still stinging. Her arms ache, all the way to the shoulders, and she's cold, and she's wet. But the girl in front of her’s got on a slick rubber poncho, and she doesn't look bothered by the weather at all, even when she loops an arm through Anya's damp one. 

"Sorry to disrespect your agency here, girl," she says, low, "but I figured you didn't want the Angel gently fondling your brain tonight? But if you are, I can absolutely just leave you here.” There aren’t many kids taller than Anya. This girl certainly isn’t: she’s  _ tiny,  _ even compared to most of the boxcar. But she’s tugging Anya along like they’re the same size, quick and easy, right to the far edge of the roof, where it drops off next to the cliff.

“That thing ain’t gonna touch me at all.” She hadn’t thought of the Angel, and now the mention of the name brings a queasy kind of pain to her stomach. Anya’s heart is pounding ten beats a second, hard enough that she can feel it all the way up in her mouth like a bird trying to break free. The lucids will be following, sooner or later, if they haven’t already called their beast out.

But it’s impossible to hear them over the rain: her ears are straining, so hard that it hurts, and still the only thing she hears is this girl’s chattering, louder even than the churn of rain all around them.

And she won’t stop talking.

”Good! Because, to be honest, it’s a point of pride that I don’t let that happen,” the girl natters, oblivious. She tilts her head up, peering up at something in the darkness, but Anya can’t see what she’s after. The girl squints - but whatever she sees, she doesn’t let it break her stride any. “But, chica, if you  _ wanted _ to go meet our makers, I guess I’d get over it. Respect your sovereignity. Not curbstomp your agency, pride or no -"

“I don’t know what you’re  _ talking about _ ,” Anya says, because it’s the easiest part of it all.

They’re on the edge of the roof, now. The girl tugs her arm free, gentle, and significantly less gently, gives her a hard shove towards the edge of the roof, far away from the lucids.

Anya staggers forward, her heel slipping. For one sickening moment, she thinks the girl’s betraying her. Trying to kill her - throwing her down to the Angel -  _ something - _

But then lightning cracks high above them. The sky rips open. The night lights up just in time for her to see the rope, and the grappling hook glinting high above, bright as the stars should be in the sky.

It’ll sting if she tries to climb it. Her hands are already split wide open, leaking a steady trail of red that’s replenishing just as quick as the rain wipes it away. Anya’s grandfather had taught her that ropes get dangerous, the wetter they are: soaked right through, they’re barely useful for anything, never mind climbing. It may do worse than sting, if she tries to get up it. It may just drop her straight to the ground, with a broken leg or worse, for the lucids to find.

This girl - because she doesn’t recognise the round face grinning at her under this poncho - could be anyone. She doesn’t know the faces of the kids in the boxcar, not even after two months, and for the first time, Anya’s starting to realise that was a poor plan.

She doesn’t know any of the kids in Redacre. She’s only got one friend in the entire town, and this girl isn’t Xaviul.

But the lucids aren’t, either. The thump of her heart is like a drum in Anya’s ears, and she knows what’ll happen if she stays here: how the sound will build and build, until there’s nothing but the thrum of the Song drowning everything else out. It happened, once, when she fell asleep outside of the boxcar, and her ears had filled with the distant song, and her eyes had filled with the bright glow of the Angel’s light.

Xaviul had found her eventually. He’d brought her back to herself, and brought her back to the boxcar, and she hadn’t slept outside of it, even a night, since then.

Anya doesn’t let herself think of that, usually, but there’s rain rolling down her face, and blood dripping from her palms, and she’s so much more tired than she’s ever felt before, and the drumbeat of her heart is only growing louder. 

Anya hesitates, curling her hands into fists, and behind her, the girl laughs.

“Get on the rope, chula,” the girl says, and places her hand on Anya’s back. It’s not a shove this time. It just feels like the promise of one. “C’mon!” Her voice drops into something teasing. “Or did you change your mind on our invisible friend, after all? Because if we’re just waiting for it to come around --”

Anya climbs.

The rain’s coming down so hard that if it hadn’t been for the hook, she never would have noticed the slip in the cave wall. It just looks like the grapple ends up solid rock, and it’s not until the girl grabs hold of the ledge, yanks, and disappears that Anya realises what’s just happened.

Once upon a time, a century or two back, Anya's grandfather used to say, Redacre was coal mining country. When he was her age, they'd just started drying up. So the owners had gone door to door through the country, hat in their hands, and asked each of the families if their sons would like to earn five whole cents an hour, crawling into the farthest depths of the mines. It was the reason they didn't have many folks left in the forest, he'd always claimed: because they’d sent all of their sons down into the mines, and their fathers with them, and if you ever went too deep into the ground, you wouldn't come back.

She’d thought, once, he’d been fibbing to her, spinning a tale to keep her away from the stone face of the cliffs and the rocks below it. But she can believe it now. Caves always make her uneasy, now.

But it’s climbing in, or it’s hiding on the edge of the leap, waiting for the Lucids to see her dangling from a rope, with the rain soaking her through her to the bone.

So she takes a breath, and she pushes inside.

There’s cloth tucked in along with the rock, held firm by something above it, and when she gets inside, the rock tugging only a little on her clothes, she can see why. The cave isn’t pitch-black. The girl’s already clicking on a little LED lantern that glows just enough to light up her face in the darkness, and cast dark, steady shadows against the walls. 

“Get the curtain behind you,” the girl says, distracted, and when Anya turns to look at the wall she just slipped in by, she can see what’s holding the cloth now: it’s a shower rod, held tense by the clips on either end. The curtain tossed on top of it’s moth-eaten, but when she slides it to the side, it covers up the gap neatly. 

“Where are we..?”

“It’s an old mineshaft entrance.” The girl’s barely gone past the entrance, but now she’s shrugging off her poncho, shaking out her arms like it’ll cast off the last dredges of water. She tosses them in a pile in the corner. Anya touches the edge of her hoodie, considering, but the cave’s cold, almost colder than it is outside.

So she keeps it on. She’s shivering a little, but it’ll dry off, she thinks, soon enough. “We figure, anyway,” the girl continues. “Look at the ceiling! You see all of those beams? Gwenna says that it must’ve collapsed way back, and they never finished clearing it out. Coal dried out first, you dig? But whatever. It works for us.”

“If you hear any sounds from on back,” she continues, “it’s either a bear, or a Lucid. So, uh, we’ll have to bail. Keep an ear out! Until then.. let’s wait out the rain, yeah?” She leans back against the wall, closing her eyes. The LED lantern isn’t giving off any heat, and she has to be just as cold as Anya, but while she’s shivering..

The other girl isn’t. Maybe it’s because she’s heavier, all dense muscle and fat. Maybe it’s just that she’s  _ at ease. _ Anya isn’t sure if she should resent or admire the ease with which she’s relaxing, unbothered, like there aren’t Lucids trudging around outside, or potentially worse things at the other end of the mineshaft. Because it’s dark down there, and deep, and the ground slopes down.

If she tripped, walking near it, how long would it take until the ground evened out?

If she went down there, would she come back?

Anya sits down instead, pulling her knees up to her chest. The fabric of her jeans squelches sadly.

“Is this connected to the maze?” she asks.

“All the way to the Plexus,” the girl says, her eyes still shut, and when Anya squints, she doesn’t notice. Redacre is filled with underground tunnels, dragged by CHORUS like a spider’s web through the bedrock, each room swollen like a body. She’s seen most of the rooms, but she hasn’t seen all of the proper maps for ‘em, yet. Tommy and Dax say they’ll be too confusing, if everyone’s taking a look before they’re done.

“Huh,” Anya says instead. “Can’t they come up?”

“They could, but why are they going to? They’ve got fifty, sixty tunnels over there, and all of ‘em lead up, ‘cause they stole the old mines, and they didn’t think to plug in the cracks. Did you know there’s two, three dry wells that if you climb on down, they lead straight into the fucking maze? Like, there’s no water in there at all.”

Anya’s hands hurt. “Yes,” she says, mild, pressing them against her jeans. It stings, but it’s better then letting them just sit and bleed. She should’ve brought bandages. She should’ve -- “Yeah, I knew that.”

“It’s pretty cool,” the girl says, oblivious. “It makes you wonder. But nah, chica, they’re not gonna come up here, don’t worry. Tommy and I figured out most of the routes, the past few months, and which ones they take, and which they don’t. Long as none of the little worker drones see us pop in and report it back, they don’t have the people to check every tunnel, y’know?”

“Or as long as they don’t hear us. So don’t fucking  _ yell _ . I keep having to remind him of that -” She pauses, suddenly, wrinkling her nose. She’s got a big nose. “Wait,” she says, then sits up, squinting at Anya.

“Wait. You’re - fuck, what’s your name again? _Annie?_ ” she says, and it’s like an accusation.

She’s got a  _ very  _ big nose.

Oh, Anya realises. It’s that girl.

“Where’s your  _ team?”  _ the girl demands.

"They went ahead," Anya says, watching her. “Tommy told me to keep watch.” The girl is sitting up, blinking readily away the rain pooling on her lashes. Her mouth is a thin line, and in the dim glow of the lantern, she does look older. How much?

Maybe sixteen, Anya thinks. Maybe even seventeen.

The girl looks right at her, and she peers down at the ground instead. Because the girl looks like she’s swallowed a thundercloud now, eyes bright as the lightning outside, and Anya doesn’t know what to do with that.

“They’re not supposed to go ahead,” the girl says, with all the weight of a hand striking the table. “That’s exactly what they’re not supposed to fucking do, what the hell? Did they say why? No, no -” She huffs out a breath, running a hand through her hair. It’s all chopped short, short enough that the fuzz barely pokes through.  _ “Did they say?” _ she says, mocking,  _ frustrated,  _ and Anya goes still. “What am I saying? Of course they didn’t fucking say. Jesus christ - “

Anya’s never done too well with people getting angry at her. Her ma just  _ doesn’t _ . Her grandpa did, sometimes, when he was in one of his moods, or she did something  _ awful  _ stupid - when she was learning how to shoot, he was always a little angry, always a little on edge, but that was manageable. She knew what was causing that, and she knew what to do about that. He didn’t want neither of them to get shot, was all.

This girl’s a mystery. Oh, Anya knows why she's getting upset, she reckons, but it just doesn't make much sense.

It's like she thinks Anya's a  _ kid _ , even though she's already fourteen.

"They told me they were gettin’ the package," Anya corrects her, mild. "You ought to keep your voice down, so folks don't hear."

The girl squints. "Never mind  _ that _ ," she says, exasperated. "That's not - nobodies gonna hear, chica, cool your jets. They told you? What'd they tell you?"

"They said they needed a lookout."

"A  _ lookout _ ," the girl repeats, and then drags her hand down her face..

"A lookout, so nothing got 'em when they came back up. It's  _ important _ ," Anya says, getting crisper with each word, because the girl's lip is starting to curl, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. "So no Lucids went down there, and if anyone heard something, we'd know. They told me that I could just knock the cans off of the tree house, and it'd sound like the wind, but they'd know it wasn't."

The girl laughs.

Anya's face floods red. She's been laughed at before, but not like this: not when it's just her, and some older girl that's got no reason to think about of this is funny. And not when there's no way out, not one that doesn't lead to the maze, or to the rain outside. "What?" Anya says, and then, louder: " _ \- what are you laughing about?" _

"There's no need for a lookout," the girl bites off. "They were supposed to come up through the maze. They were just fucking with you, the little  _ bastards _ . They probably were planning on just leaving you out there until dawn, or somebody noticed."

Oh.

She hadn't thought about that, not at all. They'd left her, but Anya hadn't -

She’d never assumed they wouldn't come  _ back _ . It hadn't seemed a possibility. It still doesn't, not fully, but the girl is still talking, acid almost dripping from her tongue.

_ "Bullshit.  _ This is some  _ bullshit, _ and I’m going to knock Tommy's head off, and I’m going to knock off _ Dax's,  _ too. You're too little for this," she says, like Anya doesn't have nearly a head on her. "He should know better! If Tommy wants to pick on someone, he can do it to someone his  _ own age. _ He knows no one is supposed to be alone! He knows we have a buddy system, because you're supposed to protect your friends -"

"We aren't friends," Anya manages.

"Then who  _ are  _ your friends?" the girl demands, leaning forward. Anya pulls back, startled. "Or your posse. Whatever! Your  _ peeps, _ girl. Because I never see you with anybody but Xavi, and you're always frowning -"

"I smile," Anya objects, but now she does sound petulant. They'd planned on leaving her, for hours and hours, just because they could. She doesn't like Tommy, but she wouldn't do that to him.

She'd just hit him a few times.

She'd prefer, she thinks, if he just took a swing.

"You  _ don't _ ," the girl tells her now, but her voice is kinder. "I’ve never seen you smile at all. Do you even have any other friends, chica?"

The answer is no.

Xaviul has friends. He's got so many people always around him that it makes her uneasy, sometimes, that he might get bored of her entirely. But he hasn't yet. And.. "I don't need more friends," she says, but she knows it’s a weak argument, even as she says it.

And the girl barely lets her get the words out, before she’s protesting: “- of course you need  _ friends!” _ It’s so crisp. It doesn’t leave any room for an argument, any more than her saying the sky was blue. “Everyone needs  _ friends. _ We're a social species, kiddo, we would've all died in the caves we started off in if it weren't for us being social. Hell, I'd die _ right now, _ if I didn't have friends."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Anya says, stiff, "but I ain't like that. I'm different."

The girl laughs, at least, and something in Anya unwinds. She doesn’t always like laughter. But it’s better than that kind of sharp-eyed pity from before. And the girl’s less pitying, when she talks next, and more firm.

"You need people. I need people. Everyone needs people," the girl says, "because we're a community, and a community leans on each other to hold everyone up."

Anya snorts. This is a conversation, she thinks. That’s better, too. "That's awfully Redacre of you," Anya says, testing the water, and then, when the girl laughs again, she risks a smile. Her hands still ache, but it feels a little better, now. "You sound like our parents."

"You've got a bite,” the girl marvels. “No wonder Tommy's picking on you. We're all gonna sound like our parents, kiddo, they raised us! But don't get prickly. Tell you what. Do me a favor, and I won't keep chewing off your ear about  _ friendship _ , okay?"

"What's the favor?" Anya asks, slow. She looks down at her jeans, and her hands pressed against them. They’re still stinging, but when she tugs at one, it doesn’t quite want to let go of the fabric. “.. throw in some bandages, and alright.”

“Bandages?” Then her eyes widen. “Oh, are you -  _ girl.  _ I -” Her mouth twists to the side. “I’ll get you bandages without any  _ promise. _ But you said you don't have many friends, right?"

Anya eyes her. ".. right,” she says, dubious, and the girl beams at her, leaning forward.

"Wrong, chica,” the girl says, and holds out her hand. “Because my name's Marie Akamine, and I'm gonna be your  _ best _ friend, starting today. Let’s shake on i - wait, fuck, let me bandage you up, first, don’t  _ bleed on me _ -”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i feel it in my soul  
>  i feel the empty hole  
> the cup that can’t be filled  
> and I feel it in my blood  
> in the fire and the flood  
> the beast that can't be killed_  
>  **\- BITTER WATER, THE OH HELLOS**


	2. In Which Anya meets Several Individuals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the start of what'll be characters discussing, and figuring out, ethnicity and identity throughout the rest of the fic. Redacre prizes diversity and has cultivated a highly varied community in their town, but it also prizes social cohesion and unity to a high degree, and identity - especially multigenerational identity - is complicated enough to dig through before you add in cult antics and the urge to conform on top of it all.
> 
> Anya’s matrilineal family is from the Monacan tribe, which recently got recognised by the federal government as an official NA tribe (hurrah!). [You can read up on them here, at their website!](https://www.monacannation.com/)
> 
> Her surname is a reference to Sasheen Littlefeather, and does not appear in any Monacan rolls - sometimes a reference is just too cool to miss.
> 
> June’s reference of “not enough to count” is a reference towards the blood quantum laws - many federally recognised tribes require members to either meet blood quantum, and/or have a direct relative in the form of a (grand)mother or (grand)father who is a tribal member to be legally recognised as a member of the tribe. This doesn't apply to their particular case, but is a relatively common verbiage towards the cultural disconnect.

"And that's why praying mantises are the worst animal, like, in the entire world," Lavi proclaims, clapping their hands together. "I'm not saying, like, they're bad _people?_ They're just bad _animals_ . Morally. Physically! _Absolutely_ socially. Like, honestly, if I were, like, an anthropologist? I would be horrified. It’s just bad!”

“I’ll totes be fair, though. I guess, like, they're okay _spiritually?_ They're good with God. But who isn’t good with God? They’re supposed to love everyone, so _that’s_ not an achievement. It’s just basic, like, _hello_ , you’re alive. Even bedbugs are good with God, probably, and they’re even worse than mantises.” 

“Like, mantises bite off the heads, right? But bedbugs have, like, these _daggers_ , right on their --”

"Can we never speak of bug banging again?" Marie says, with great pain, and Lavi blows a bubble right at her face. 

Ever since their time in the cave, Marie’s been stuck to Anya’s side like a burr. When she wakes up in the evening and leaves the boxcar, she’s always waving her over. “You’re eating with us,” Marie says, chipper, and it’s never actually a suggestion, because when she doesn’t wake up, Marie comes and gets her. When Xaviul’s still asleep, or around, then she’ll drag him along with them. 

It turns out that Marie doesn’t make suggestions very often. She’s sixteen and ten months, one of the oldest members of the club in age and dates. She knew Bells personally, and she calls Gwen Gwenna, and just like with Tommy, the boxcar bursts into an uproar every time that she walks in through the doors. Everyone thinks she’s cool, because she brings in pizzas, sometimes, and she does stick and poke tattoos for anyone that asks. 

Anya has to admit: she thinks Marie’s kind of cool, too, even if Xaviul wouldn’t let her get one. He’d been so busy fussing over the risk of infection, up until Tommy’d offered to give him one on his face. 

“But -” 

“No buts,” Marie says, jabbing at her hand with a chopstick. “It’s _gross!_ Eat your noodles, chico, and stop talking about things that’d make your mama swat you. And Anya - aren’t you going to use your chopsticks?” 

She’d been reaching towards her fork. But now, guiltily, Anya drops it, and picks back up the sticks. 

Marie doesn’t have to make suggestions. People practically fall over to do what she says. Anya isn’t sure how to feel about the fact she’s apparently one of them. 

The lot of them are sitting together about three, four miles away from the boxcars, sitting on top of one of the bridges. The river underneath ‘em doesn’t even count as one, as far as Anya’s concerned, or it oughtn’t: it’s so sleepy, she could dive right into it, and she wouldn’t expect anything would happen at all. There’s no riptides, there’s no whirlpools, there’s no undertow to go and drown you if you tip your toe in. 

But it’s pretty, there’s no road leading to it, and Anya’s never seen anybody come hiking out this far into the woods, so it’s a good place to eat lunch. Marie’d hauled her ma’s leftovers out, and they’ve been eating noodles that leave Anya’s mouth numb: her, Marie, and the kid she’s hauled along with ‘em tonight. 

Lavi, she’d introduced herself, and she’d shook her hand hard enough to bruise, and then she’d launched into the middle of some kind of story involving bugs mating, while Marie turned every colour that a person could turn. 

Least her face’s evening out now. “I got this from home,” she says, taking another bite of her noodles. Marie hadn’t asked if Anya knew how to use chopsticks, so she’s just watching her, and doing her best to copy. It just looks like pinching noodles. It shouldn’t be hard. “My mom made a whole, huge batch, and was like, ah, _baixinho_ , going on a sleepover? Take this, take this, tell them it was made with love. Spoiler alert, kiddos, it wasn’t, she just forgets my brother’s at college.” 

“I wish my _brother_ was at college,” Lavi complains. She’s finished her entire bowl in moments, and now it’s sitting, sticky and empty, with the lid on next to her. “Did you know, like, he stole my coat today? My actual, _factual coat,_ right off my back! And my mum _sided with him!”_

“Really,” Marie says, dry. 

The noodles slide right off of her chopstick. Anya hasn’t been talking much, but faced between trying to trap more of them and the conversation, talking has a certain appeal. “Why?” she asks, and - 

Oh, maybe it doesn’t, because now both of them are looking at her. 

Lavi shrugs. “Because she’s hateful and she resents me, like, personally,” she says with a pout.

“Because Lavi keeps stealing their brother’s coats. And his shirts. And his name -”

“It’s my name, too!”

“You _totes_ stole his name, babe,” Marie tells her, and then leans over towards Anya, lowering her voice. “Y’see, they’re a bit of a fucking thief -”

“I am not!”

“They?” Anya asks. 

“They use they,” Marie says, and takes another bite of noodles. “Y’know, like -”

“Like everyone _cool_ ,” Lavi huffs, kicking out her - their? - legs. “Unlike Marie, who’s a total fucking major loser-nerd-geek-king, for, like, the record?”

Watching Marie and Lavi talk is like watching a two-person dance. Their friendship’s nothing like hers and Xaviul’s: they’re a stream pouring along the rocks, always perfectly in synch, even when they’re apart. There’s ripples when Anya gets worried, or when she shot his mother in the foot. But usually, they ain’t anything bigger than fish. Even those ripples flow with the water. They don’t disrupt it.

All Marie and Lavi ever do is disrupt each other. They’re always scrapping, always biting, and if Anya didn’t know they were friends from the way they’re practically tied at the hip, she isn’t sure if she’d believe it. But they are. They’re just so damn loud about it.

And she’s not sure how to work herself into that.

With Xaviul, back in the start, she’d just decided they were friends, and that, it’d turned out, was that. There’d never been any work to be had! They’d just fit - but here, she’s gonna have to put in an effort.

“A loser nerd geek king,” she says carefully, meticulously sounding each new word, “like the kid who’s stealin’ - their - brother’s shit?”

Marie lets out a bark of laughter, and Anya thinks that’s loud, until Lavi goes and _shrieks_ . They kick their legs straight out, hands shoving down on the rail of the bridge so that their entire body pops up, like they’re about to launch themself right over Anya and straight into her face - but then they deflate, pulling up their knees to tuck them under their chin. “You’re so mean!” they say, marveling. “Marie, she’s so mean! Am I being bullied? I think I’m being _bullied_ , Marie!”

“You deserve to be bullied,” Marie says, and gives Anya a nudge with her knee. “Good shot, kiddo.”

Anya doesn’t know what to say to that.

But she never has to think about what to say to that. Lavi will talk right over her given the first chance, without even noticing, and Marie falls right in step with her. She fights her noodles in relative silence. Anya doesn’t mind, she thinks: it’s just a different kind of friendship, and a different sort of rhythm, that’s all. And if she has to choose between sitting alone on top of the boxcar, or hunting alone in the woods, or trailing on missions with kids full of stupid words and stupid thoughts, and this -

She’ll take this. Having friends, it turns out, is alright. And Marie has so many. Lavi, and Archer, and Astro, and Tiffany, and so many names that it makes her head spin to try to keep up. So she doesn’t. She just.. lingers, while Marie’s offering up the latest person on a platter, and if she’s quiet enough, she doesn’t have to do any talking at all: Marie just tumbles right over her, filling in each gap, answering each question.

She doesn’t need to remember names, not when Marie keeps introducing her each time. And for the most part, she doesn’t want to. Tiffany’s too close to Tommy, and Archer is strange, stilted and anxious in a way that Xaviul seems to like, but just makes her uncomfortable. Lavi does, too. They’re always bouncing, like one of the small dogs she’s seen in town, always so full of enthusiasm about nothing in particular - and they’re always poking and prodding at Anya, like if they say the right things, she’ll be excited, too.

Anya makes a point of remembering Astro’s name, though. Astro is nice. The first week or so after Marie takes Anya under her wing, they’re the only person that Anya never gets to meet, because every introduction to Astro’s foiled by how nice they are: they’re always off helping someone when Marie finds them, whether it's with fixing up their wounds, or writing out maps, or teaching them sign. They’re always busy, never quite surrounded by people, but always so involved with the ones they are. Every time Marie sees them, she just clicks her tongue, shakes her head and says: “ - ah, chica, we’ll come back. You’ll meet them later!”

Later, as it turns out, is almost two weeks after she meets Marie, and Marie isn’t even there.

Daxon doesn't set her working with Tommy again. After that failed mission, he apologises, red-cheeked and embarrassed, and then he hauls Tommy over to do the same. Anya bears it, and his fake-sheepish grin, with as much tolerance as she can muster.

Then she hides in the woods for the next two nights, sleeping in one of the old hunting hides that she knows the owners don't come to outside of December. She eats her stowed granola, she drinks the bottled water that's tastes older than her, and she bars the door, and ties her hands to the thick wooden slat meant to go across the window. She knows how to pull it loose with her teeth, but she doesn't reckon anybody stealing her body might, and sure enough, she wakes up each time with her wrists still bound, sore but not wandering.

She doesn't come back to the boxcar until she thinks she can handle the sight of him without hitting something.

After that, they send her out with Bambi more. Bambi's quiet as her namesake, but she's kind, when she manages to speak up. She's Anya's age, if not her height, and they spend a lot of time just preparing supplies. They tuck boxes full of what Bambi calls 'audio bugs' into the trees. They hide notebooks with maps of the maze into the cliff-face, and stack rocks in front of them, so neat that a wandering eye won't notice them: stacks of eight, balanced neatly, right next to the landmarks each team gets assigned and told to memorise.

There's been rumours of kids betraying the club to CHORUS. There's always the worry, Marie's mentioned, that someone'll slip up and mention something to their parents. So the only people who know all of the landmarks are Daxon and Gwen, and maybe some of the other, older members of the club with them. Anya and Bambi don't get to know all of the hide-away spots, but they know enough that it seems like they're being pulled out every other night to go and hide away more and more things throughout the town. Anya spends her days sleeping on the hard dirt caking the boxcar floor. She spends her nights, it feels like, stomping across it as she trudges through town.

By the time they get back to the boxcar most nights, she just wants to find Xaviul, sit down, and rest. Marie's taken to taking one look at her face and leaving her alone.

Lavi, unfortunately, does not have the same courtesy.

Lavi's all curls and fluff, from top to bottom. There's a sticky heat in the air still, even this late into October, but that doesn’t seem to bother them at all. The jacket they’ve got on is so shiny that it’s got to be fake leather, but there’s lace on the sleeves and lace on the collar, and they’ve got on boots over their electric blue jeans. Their hair frames their face in a frizzy blue cloud that bounces when they do.

Lavi is always bouncing. “Oh, _Anya!_ ” they cry, bursting from their chair in a flurry of curls. Beside them, Tiffany jolts back, narrowly missing the hems of their jacket hitting her in the face. It’s two, three sizes too large for them, and it just flaps to match their curls as they reach out, grabbing Anya’s hands firmly between theirs.

“You haven’t been around all night! It’s been hours! I’ve missed you!”

Anya blinks at them. “Ah,” she says.

“And I’ve got so much to tell you! I saved you lunch. Are you hungry? It’s almost morning.” Lavi’s got very large eyes, Anya’s realising - or maybe it’s just the fact they’re scant inches from her face, close enough that she can see the brown streaks through the blue. “You look hungry,” they decide, firm. “Don’t worry, I have you covered!”

“I already ate --”

“You’re so tall! Don’tcha know, tall people are supposed to eat a lot? I bet you don’t eat a lot. You’re so skinny, too.” They make it sound like she’s got a disease. With a huff, Lavi falls back onto their heels, then bounces forward, hooking an arm through Anya’s.

She’s too befuddled to resist as Lavi hauls her off towards the well. They plant themself on the lip of it with ease, legs kicking out as they wrestle the backpack off of their shoulders. A glittery unicorn winks at her from the back, before Lavi’s ripping it open and rummaging inside.

“Aha!” they say, victorious, and toss a sandwich into Anya’s lap. The plastic wrap is cute, she has to admit, with dancing musical notes. The sandwich inside is..

“Oh,” Anya says, bemused. “Does your ma cut off the crusts?”

“No! We don’t waste food.” Lavi wrinkles their nose at her. “I cut them off,, because they’re the best part. Do you want ‘em back? I can share, I guess, if you want -”

“Um. No. That’s alright.”

“Good! I already ate them,” Lavi confesses, and they take a bite of their own sandwich. “I missed you! Daxon keeps giving you so much work, it feels like we never, like, actually talk anymore, and that’s super sad."

Anya hadn't even realised they had talked enough to notice.

"I was telling Marie, like, that’s super, _duper_ sad. What’ve you been doing? I want to hear everything! Unless you don’t want to tell me everything? And then, like, I guess you don’t have to tell me everything. Maybe you could tell me half of everything -”

Lavi’s so much easier to deal with when Marie’s right there. Anya’s never had their full attention on her, and now that she does, she feels like a fish under the knife.

“Um,” Anya says, eloquently, and Lavi titters. Actually titters at them, like a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts.

“You can even tell me a third,” they say, like it’s some great boon. “Or we can start with something easy! How old are you? Fourteen, right? So you’re, um - um -” They lean back, blowing out their cheeks. “In ninth grade, right? D’you like it?"

Anya isn’t precisely sure what grade she’s in. She hasn’t been to the school more than a few days this year, and less in the past ones: her mother had never forced her, too busy with her work, and the administrators hadn’t cared for the longest time. She’s a grade under Xaviul, she thinks, but -

She’s not entirely sure what grade he is, either. But she can’t admit that to Lavi, bright-eyed and curious. Anya doesn’t always know how to get on with the other boxcar kids, but -

She remembers Tommy calling her a hick, warm and amused, and she drags a hand through her hair, tugging hard at the end of a braid. “Iunno. It’s aright,” she hedges instead. “Lots of work. Dunno why they always want us writing so much.” Xaviul’s complained about his essays, pages on pages of words on the history of Red Acre, or the country, or everything in between. “What about you? Do you like yours?”

“Oh, no, I hate it. I’ve got Ms. Perez as my teacher - have you had her? No? Lucky! She’s so _basic_ , she’s just awful. And all of my classmates are so _immature_! Seventh graders are practically infants,” she moans. “They’re barely even people, they chew their nails and, like, half of them are newbies this year.” Lavi rolls their eyes, leaning back on the well, far enough that Anya thinks they’ll fall right in.

They don’t. They just give a great, heaving sigh, their shoulders rolling back with the weight of it. “I hate the newbies,” they admit, pouting. “I know! It’s so mean! But it’s true, they’re just awful, and I just - I don’t know why we even need thme, sometimes, honestly, they’re so dumb and they don’t understand anything. Did you know one of them stopped me? I thought she was going to ask about my hair! My hair is so cool. Don’t you think it’s cool?”

Their hair sits in perfect ringlets around their face, the blue a cool contrast against the yellow of their skin. Anya nods, and Lavi beams at her. “It is cool,” they say. “It’s _super_ cool! But she wasn’t asking me about my hair at all. She just came up, and she started speaking Spanish. Like, _Spanish!_ Really! Like I was supposed to know that!”

“So I told her, oh, no, I’m so sorry, I only speak Telugu - and she got mad at me, because she thought I was Puerto Rican. With a name like _Vankamamidi!"_

Lavi’s led this entire conversation, but at least before, Anya could bob along in it. It’d made a rough sort of sense. This - if they’d started speaking in tongues, she think, she might’ve followed it a little better. As is, she’s just drowning, and Lavi’s too caught up in their own monologue to know. “Um,” she says.

“With a face like this!” Lavi cries, shooting up in their seat to press both hands to their cheeks. “I don’t even look Puerto Rican! I mean, not there’s anything wrong with _looking_ Puerto Rican - like, they look great - but I don’t, I’m practically a stereotype - but, like, a good one, you know, not a bad one -”

“I don’t know what any of that is,” she interrupts, and Lavi pauses midword, their entire face scrunching with confusion.

“Aren’t you Indian?” they say. “How don’t you know?”

"Um -"

“You look Indian,” they say, dubious. “You’re all brown like us. What’s your mum?”

“My mum’s -” Her mother. Anya’s never thought much about it before, but - Xaviul’s mother had said they were both native, had brought it up as a way of prying into Anya's life and business. Her mother said it didn't matter none. They didn’t have kin up in Redacre, nor any left in places they’d gone to. Her father - Anya’s grandfather - had been the last of their family around, and whoever he knew, whatever kin he might've had spread to the wind, he’d taken to the grave.

And Anya was only half, anyway, so her ma had reckoned that wasn't enough to count. Mrs. Neptune was just nosy, she'd said, and that had been the end of that.

But her grandfather had said a name, sometimes, when he was telling stories.

“My mum’s Moccasin,” she says, slow, trying out the word. It ain’t quite right, but it’s close enough, she thinks, to get the point across.

Lavi blinks at her.

“Oh,” they say. “Neat! What’s your pops, then?”

“Dead, mostly,” Anya says, dry, and Lavi goes quiet.

Anya’s fool enough to hope that might be the end of it. The silence feels like a balm, after Lavi’s rush of chattering and her long night out. Bambi doesn’t talk much, but she talks just enough, and between her and Lavi..

Anya likes her solitude, but she loves her silence. Lavi’s quiet next to her, staring soulfully at their sandwich like it might contain answers, and finally, finally, Anya has time to bite into her own. It’s some kind of spicy meat, with spinach and no cheese to speak of. Not great, but after a long night, it sits just right, and she’s just relaxing into it when Lavi pipes back up.

“Well! I’m Telugu,” they chirp, turning to face her. “That means we’re Indians! From, like, India, y’know? Or, well, my mum’s Telugu, but your mum’s all that counts, honestly. And my name’s Vankamamidi-Goldfinch, because my parents hate me, I’m pretty sure. But Vankamamidi is the Telugu part! It’s so not Puerto Rican. Your name’s Littlefeather, right? And people get their names from their dads, usually, mostly.”

“And Littlefeather is kind of..” They pause, looking up at the sky. “Scottish?” they hazard.

Anya blinks at them.

“Ah,” she says, but she doesn’t need to say more, because they’re still talking.

“It doesn’t sound Scottish.” Lavi clicks their tongue against the roof of their mouth, then reaches out, tugging at the end of Anya’s braid. “You don’t look Scottish, either,” they say. “But I thought your mum was. She’s so pale! And she’s always dying her hair red, so I thought it was just, y’know -” They make a gesture with their hand, sharp and looping, and Anya follows it with her eyes, eyebrows furrowed.

“I -” Anya’s head is swimming. “What?”

“It’s okay,” Lavi says, warm. “My sister’s blonde, too, it just happens sometimes, I think. But you’re so much darker than her! So what was your dad? Because you do look Indian, kind of. I mean, what is he, other than - um - dead?” They finally pause, just long enough to take a breath, but then their words all come out in a rush: “- I’m sorry, that’s just _awful_. Was it in the war? Madison’s dad died last year, when he was out on duty, and nobody knew what to do -”

Never mind swimming. Anya just feels like she’s going to drown. She thinks that she's hearing it all right. All she needs to do is hear the first and the last, and she can fill most things in, usually. But Lavi's talking so quick, spilling their words like water, she's not sure what she's hearing. And Lavi's lips are flapping too fast for her to keep up with watching them.

She could be hearing right, and it just don't make sense. Or she could be hearing wrong, and she'd have to _ask,_ and look like a damn fool who couldn't even keep up with a conversation.

“I never met him,” she says, sharp, and there’s a warmth in her cheeks, creeping all the way up towards her ears. Lavi doesn't know about her hearing. Lavi doesn't know about her schooling, or her family, or the barbs folks keep slinging at her over her mother, and Anya doesn't know if she feels relieved or ashamed for it.

She just feels bad, mostly. She jumps to her feet, cramming her hands into her pockets, and she starts walking.

She isn’t sure where. Anywhere, except for near Lavi - but it’s never that easy, is it? Because she only gets three steps before Lavi lands next to her in a flurry of motion, their eyes wide, their mouth pulled down. “Oh, I’m sorry,” they cry. “I didn’t mean to be rude!”

"Sure you did," Anya says. She won't look down at them, not when her face is still flooding red, and her nails are digging holes into her palms. Lavi is Marie's friend. That means that she's got to be nice, even when Lavi's talking so fast that there's no way she won't look stupid.

It doesn't mean it's easy. Especially not when they let out a low, distressed whine next to her, like a hound that just got kicked. "I didn't! I'm not lying," they cry. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings -"

Anya counts to ten, and she keeps walking.

But Lavi keeps walking with her. They're eight or so inches smaller than her, and they're not exactly long limbed: each of her steps take them two to match, but they don't slow down, even when Anya speeds up. Even when she turns hard to the left, stepping off of the trail the kids have worn and into the forest proper, Lavi stocks to her heels like a burr.

And each frantic, determined huff of air, slowly but steadily, dims Anya's ire. By the time the trees thin out, opening up into a small hollow of light, her face is cool.

Lavi's, when Anya turns, is bright red. Their curls are plastered to their head from sweat, and they fling themself onto the clearest part of the ground with a great, heaving huff of air. "Oh! I didn't mean it like that," they say again, petulant, and Anya is ready to snap, until they add: " - you're better off without one, anyway. At least he can’t be a part of the cult, right?”

Anya sits down on a nearby rock instead. The clearing isn’t the best place in the forest to hang around. She still prefers her hunting hides, and the caves - but this is near enough to the boxcar to feel solitary, and not so far that she has to look for traps on the ground.

It’s the only good that she can admit the daimons have ever done for them. Anya doesn’t know how, and she doesn’t know when it started, but the song can't be heard this far into the woods, and CHORUS never swings out here on their patrols - and no matter how many times kids have fled back to the boxcar, none of them have ever been followed. It’s been two months for Anya alone, and longer for the rest of the clubhouse. They should’ve been found.

But they haven’t, and whatever protection covers the clubhouse - it extends all the way out here, too, this clearing around it.

She wants to say something sharp to Lavi. If Xaviul was here, he’d probably have the sort of comeback straight from the films, the sort that’d make their face flood red and send them back to the boxcar in tears. It’s a mean impulse, but she doesn’t know what’s wrong with them, or why every word feels like a barb. She doesn't know why she's being so damn defensive, either.

Because across from her, Lavi is practically quivering with the need to keep talking, like a little dog full of shakes. But they ain’t. They’re swallowing their words down, watching her with a face like they just got kicked, and..

“You’re an awful pest, you know?” Anya finally says, because it ain't fair that Lavi's making her sour, but it ain't fair to take it out on _them,_ either.

“People say that. I’m sorry,” they say, mournful. “Everyone always says I talk too much..”

“You do,” she says, mild, and Lavi flinches. Then they deflate onto the rock, drawing their knees up underneath their chin.

“If you don’t want me to talk, I won’t. I can shut up! I didn’t mean to upset you.”

It’s a tempting offer. Part of Anya’s still smarting. But living in the boxcar’s always been a case of kids trodding all over her, and.. well. At least Lavi’s looking properly sad across the row, limp as a cat dunked in the water, so mournful that their face looks ready to melt right off. They weren't trying to get to her goat on purpose, like Tommy. It's not their fault they managed, anyway.

And she’s curious. “What d’you mean, part of the cult?”

Lavi’s voice is more even when they speak, more careful. It's a lot more slower. “The cult,” they say, and they make another gesture with their hand. A flat palm, their thumb curled in and four fingers spread wide. They tap their chin twice, pointed - then they curl most of their fingers in, twisting their pointer in a sharp circle. “Y’know, They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named -”

The first rule of dealing with the Daimons is that you don’t say their name. To say their name is to get their attention, and smart kids don't any any part of that. Tommy crows out Thee-I-Dare's name at every turn, but he's one of the few. Most of the kids use their letters, or they use nicknames.

This is the first time that Anya's seen anybody use their hands. But Speak-as-One's the Daimon nobody wants to risk hearing them. They're the voice that their parents all worship, and the one that the rest are fighting against. Because all the Daimons hate each other, but they hate the cult even more.

"I know what you're saying." Anya's hands itch to copy the gesture, but she folds them in her lap, instead. No need to give Lavi an excuse to get back into her face; they're so much more tolerable with a couple of feet between them.

"Why would he be part of that? Not everybody's parents are," she says. Her mother is a part of it, but Anya's grandfather wasn't. And Bambi's parents are walkers. They'd seen them just the other night, wandering the streets.

Anya had thought Bambi was about to cry. But she'd shrugged instead, lips thin, and they'd kept on going without another word.

Lavi shrugs. When they’re sitting down, their legs folded primly over each other, hunched with their elbows tucked in - they look so much smaller, buried under the thick shag of their hair and the heft of their jacket. They’re younger than she is, Anya thinks, by maybe only a year, but they look even younger. “Not everyone's! Tommy's are sleepers. I wish that was me,” they say, glum. “Both of mine are Lucids. Y'know, that means -"

"- they're awake," Anya says. "How'd you find out?"

When Lavi looks at her, startled, she shrugs. “I mean,” Anya says, watching them, “they didn’t tell you, did they? Did you see ‘em? Were they out and about, doing the whole face thing?” Lavi’s still just looking at her, wide-eyed and quiet, so after a pause, she presses two fingers to the corner of her eye and pinches, tugging the skin. “This."

 _That's_ enough to stir Lavi from their surprise. They grimace. “Never do that again,” they say, despairing. “That looks awful. Yes! Um. I mean - no! They didn’t do - that." They pause, chewing on their lip. "I mean, they didn’t just tell me! It was - well, they just - they just -”

"If you don't wanna say, you don't gotta," Anya says, and they flush, wilting onto their rock. They're so _expressive._ She feels like a rock in comparison, stoic and silent.

"No! I want to. It's just -" They puff out their cheeks, raking their hands up and through their curls, so they fall in one great flounce around their face.

“They sat me down," Lavi says, all in a rush, "when all of this started happening. And everyone started worrying about the kids, and, like, gangs. Xavi-pavi could tell you about that, I think, his mom probably went nuclear.” They lean forward, resting their elbows on their knees, and squashing their hands into their cheeks. Their voice goes low, nearly as low as Marie’s, and the words get syruppy, heavy with the kind of accent Anya’s only ever heard on tv: “- but my pops, he says, right after dinner, ‘oi, Ravi, Lakshmi, getcher asses upstairs, yeah? Lavi, you little chungus, siddown, we gotta taaawk. Y’know that Madi-Shaw girl? Y’know all this shit that’s happenin’ all over town? Well, get this -’”

Everything Lavi does is so _expressive_ , and so jerky. Anya feels like a statue, watching them, for with that pause, they jolt up like someone’s clipped a string to their collar, their spine branch-straight, and slam their hands together. Their voice is too high to boom.

They try anyway. “- ‘it’s fake! It ain’t real!’ And then my mum came in, and she started explaining the rest. It was super boring! Mega boring. Like, have you ever been to temple, Anya?”

“There’s a church near my mum’s house,” she says, slow, because she wants to hear about ‘the rest’, but they’ll get to that, she thinks. Lavi’s back to chattering like a jackadaw. She just has to wait.

Her grandpa had said that the church was the place that Hoadley had preached at, before he’d flung himself off the cliffs. The last time she’d seen it, there’d been a tree growing on the roof, with roots thicker than her hands crawling down the sides of it, and moss all over the stone. He’d laughed, when she’d spooked over the sight. Said she shouldn’t worry: that it was just an old growth forest they lived in, and everything always got taken back by the forest in the end. “I ain’t been inside, though.”

“That..” Lavi pauses. “Well! It can count,” they decide. “A church is kind of like a temple, probably. I don’t know! It was like this whole, big, come-to-church kind of moment. Like, gosh, Lavipavi, your whole soul is at risk to earthly temptations, and, like, maybe actual factual murder? They didn’t say that part! They’re not, like, bad people. Sort of? Maybe. They’re just -"

“Bad,” they decide finally, with great finality. “They’re just bad. And they’re cultists, and they just told me, and they thought I’d be okay with it! Like, they were even like - oh, we’ve lied to you, we’re telling you the truth now, like that matters, right on Kol Nidrei, because my pops is a big, dramatic asshole, and what’s the point of saying anything, if you’re not making a point with, like, mood lighting and stuff? It’s so _dumb_. He’s so dumb! I -”

They’re addressing this all so casually, but - “Why’d they tell you?” Because here Lavi is, in the middle of the woods, with the clubhouse still right around the bend. But they’re not trying to hide their words while they talk, or lower their voices.

This isn’t a secret, apparently.

They blink at her.

“Well -” they say, slowly, then they wrinkle their nose. “Why wouldn’t they? My parents don’t lie to me.”

“Everyone’s parents lie to them,” Anya says, and before the sentence is even over, Lavi’s shaking their head, hard enough that the curls whip.

“Mine don’t! They never, ever lie, not forever, not for long. It’s kind of - um, it’s kind of totally horrible, actually, sometimes. They always say so much, and I don’t _care_.” A beat. “But they don’t lie,” they say again, firm. “Not about anything important! They said they had to tell me, and they said that they’d tell my siblings, too, when they’re old enough.”

“All parents lie,” Anya repeats, firm. “It’s what they do.” And it is. Redacre had hundreds of families, all clustered together throughout the town, packed together like sardines in a can. There were smaller groups out on the edges, like Anya’s ma and grandpa, but even then - everyone knew each other. Everyone’d known each other’s kids.

And it felt like almost everybody was involved in the cult, but nobody had ever breathed a word to their kids, or anybody else’s. When the voices had started appearing, they’d called kids liars. When kids had started fleeing, they’d tracked them down, and they’d still never said a word.

Anya’s ma is kneedeep in all of it, she thinks, and she’d never said a word.

Lavi huffs.

“They don’t! Not good parents,” they say with a jerk of their chin. “Mine never, ever lie to me, and my cousins parents don’t lie to them, and I bet - most don’t lie, not if they’re good people -”

Anya’s guts twist.

“Oh!” Lavi cries, but she’s already standing up, wiping the dust off of her clothing. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - I wasn’t trying to say -”

Lavi’s like a little dog, all full of shakes and energy. So Anya holds up a hand, just like she would for somebody’s hound. “Don’t follow me,” she says, crisp, and Lavi’s face falls.

But they don’t follow as she goes and makes her way.. just away, because her heart’s racing and there’s a lump in her throat. Going back to the boxcar ain’t an option, not when she’s riled like this. If Tommy so much as looked at her, she thinks, she’d tear his face clean off, Marie or no Marie.

So she doesn’t go there. She heads off into the woods, letting her feet take her where they may. The area around the boxcar ain’t one that she’d ever been to regularly, prior to the start of things. It was too far from her house. There’d never been a point to roaming very far, when everything she’d needed was right around the bend.

But woods are woods, and she’s gotten used to this corner of it. 

And when the trees start clearing off, she knows what she’ll see in front of her. The river here still ain’t worth the name, but it’s a good place. There aren’t other kids there, usually. She can take off her shoes, rest them in the water, lean back and relax. Pretend that nothing’s going on at all, and that the past few months hadn’t happened.

Pretend that she’s back at home, and not living in a boxcar full of kids who keep trodding on her nerves.

But the river isn’t empty, tonight. There’s a kid on the edge of the riverbank, fishing pole in hand, and she’s about to turn right around when the light hits their hair.

It’s the same cornflower blue as Lavi’s, pushed up into a mockery of a rooster’s crest.

She clears her throat instead, loud. They don’t look up, so she steps in closer, careful to let her boots crunch on the gravel. The grass’s been trod down low, here, from the occasional floods, and too many feet.

But Astro doesn’t look up still, not until she’s sitting down right next to them. Then they smile at her, turning to grab their notebook, and..

Oh. Right.

“Are you deaf?” she blurts out, soon as they’re looking at her, and across, they hold up a page that reads: **'Hello.'**

Astro doesn't speak. They carry a notebook, one that's too small for their big hands: their fingers fold over the edges, and Anya doesn't see how their own doesn't block the page. But their writing is always pristine, just as square as the rest of them.

 **‘My parents are,'** is their answer, and then under it: **‘You can talk.'**

“Oh. Go - aright,” she says instead, and leans back, kicking out her heels to rest in the water. “Is it okay if I don’t?”

As way of answer, they shrug, and turn back to fishing.

What feels like a few minutes later, they’re shaking her shoulder, gentle. There’s grass pressed damply against her cheek; when she opens her eyes, it’s near enough to brush against her eyelashes. She’s lying down. She doesn’t remember lying down.

But the sky’s brightening above them, streaks of pink through the fading blue, and her feet are shriveled prunes that squelch when she slides ‘em into her boots. There’s another nudge on her shoulder. Astro holds up their notebook: **‘You looked like you needed to sleep.'**

“Guess I did,” she says, and they nod, satisfied, before turning back to packing up.

Anya trails them back to the boxcar in glorious silence. Above them, the critters are getting into their holes for the night. She can hear the hoot of an owl, somewhere off in the distance, and something scuttling away when her foot cracks on a branch. All around ‘em, the crickets are still singing their ragged song, rasping out notes that catch on the edge of her hearing.

But Astro doesn’t say a word, and neither does she. It’s nice. It’s why, when they set their fishing pole down next to the boxcar and then plunk down into one of the chairs, she lingers instead. It’s the first time that she’s seen them alone, and not helping folks out.

It’s probably the only time she’s gonna see ‘em alone, she figures, because right now, all the kids are tromping back home, or settling down in the boxcar for the day. There’s no one around, save for the two of them, and the crickets, and the critters.

When she settles into the chair next to ‘em, they don’t pay her any mind. It’s nice. Most of the other kids - they just stress her out, but Astro.. Anya likes them. They're like a birch, she thinks: strong, quiet, stable, and pale, which is why she keeps looking at them sidelong as they sit outside the boxcar, staring at the stars.

Eventually, they notice.

**‘Is there something on my face?’**

"Nah," she says. If she wanted to, she could just let the answer drop right there. They wouldn't mind, she thinks. The two of them would just go back to looking at the stars, and occasionally commenting on the things they need to.

But after Lavi, there’s something in her that itches to talk to someone properly. And she could go and find Xaviul, but..

She wants to talk to Astro.

"Why don't you wear a hat during the day? 'cause, y'know -" They've got a big peeling spot on one of their shoulders. A few days ago, it was red: now it's just white and flaking and strange looking, enough that it makes Anya want to scratch her own shoulder raw. "My ma always wore hats," she says. "Said it kept her looking young."

 **‘I don't think we need to look younger.'** Astro smiles. They've got a soft face. It dimples easily. Then: **‘Wore?'**

The last time Anya had seen her mother was at her home. She'd woken up to hearing her talk to the town officials, about how she was difficult - how they needed to talk to her, and her ma wasn't fit -

-and her ma had agreed. She’d bobbed her head like Anya was some kind of feral dog that’d gone and bit somebody, and now had to be taken out back.

Anya could forgive the way that her ma had lied to her, because it was the same way every adult in Redacre had. But the memory of her ma just rolling over and giving up leaves a sour taste in her mouth.

So she turns her head to the side, and just like her grandfather used to, spits on the ground. "Might as well be," she says, flat. It didn’t make her feel better. It just makes the sour feeling spread, deeper and deeper, curling in ill little circles in her belly and biting at the back of her teeth.

But it feels right. Why shouldn’t she be hurting? A wound a wound, she reckons, whether it’s on your body, or on your soul. It isn't on her if it ain't healing, or if it feels like it might never.

And maybe Astro gets that! Maybe Astro gets her, for the most part, because all they do is hrum, low and thoughtful, before they straighten up off of the boxcar. They’ve dyed their hair blue, the same water-soft colour as Lavi’s, the same blue as their eyes. Usually, they keep it swept back with a comb and some gel, but it’s late at night: it’s all rumpled from lying around, with wefts sticking every which way.

 **‘Can you sign?’** they write, and then they make a gesture with their hands, the same sort that Lavi did, all the way back at the clearing.

“Nah,” she says.

**‘Would you like to learn how? I can teach you how to say some words. Like your name.'**

The first time that Anya had spoken to the daimons, the most friendly of them - Dance-for-Us, the daimon folks always said was for joy - she’d called her by the name on her birth certificate, the one that nobody but her ma ever knew before that, one that even Anya didn’t know. It’s the name that the daimons call her, now, when they speak to her, or they speak of her in dreams. It’s the ones that she’s made kids lose teeth over tryin’ to say.

The daimons always said that names had power, and it feels like it. Lavanya is cold water down her neck, or the feeling of a snail crunching underfoot: the sharp resistance of impact, and then that sickening, startlingly pop, too late, just when you realise what you did. She can’t stand it, none at all, and so the way some of the kids treat names, swathing themselves in nicknames like they’re fucking masks - it makes sense.

Maybe their name makes ‘em feel sick, too.

Astro’s one of ‘em. They have to be: Anya can’t reckon anyone would ever go as far as to name their kid Astro, no matter how strange Red Acre gets.. but it’s alright. Their eyes are bright in the darkness, but they’re not flames. Astro is human through and through, not even a host, and the way the skin pricks at the back of her neck at their words -

Well, that’s just on her.

Sometimes a name’s just a name. Astro doesn’t mean anything by it.

“Sure,” she says, and they begin to sign.

They curl their hand into a fist, fingers curled in, thumb tucked to the side, and they hold it out to her. "A." Astro doesn't say words, not if they can avoid it. They just mouth the letter instead, and Anya's used enough to that that it took her ages to fucking notice.

She copies the gesture. "A."

"N," they don't say again, and their first two fingers wrap around their thumb, like roots in soil. Her version's sloppier. She doesn't crook her thumb, not at first, but Astro doesn't try to fix it - they just lift a hand, drawing her attention, and let her do it herself.

They're older than her, but they're not like Marie. They're not even like Xaviul, sometimes, who fusses and fusses, trying to fix things that he can't go and fix. ("Maybe your pa's a CIA agent," he keeps saying, hopeful, and - the thought's sweet, but it's started making her itch the last few months, in a way she doesn't get.)

Astro just lets things sit, and waits for her to sort it herself. It's nice. It feels like..

"Y" is back to the fist, and then they're back to A. Astro doesn't go too slow as they spell her name out in full, one letter after the last, and they grin at her when she hits the end, wide and warm enough that she smiles back.

It feels like respect. The club always feels awfully short of that.

**'All done. Or do you want to learn your full name?'**

"Maybe another night," she says, and it's not a lie. Maybe some night, the sky'll rip open and set down a tornado on the lot of 'em, too, to suck away the town and everything in it.

Not apt to happen, but it'd be nice.

The conversation's dying back down. Anya's got her eyes half-closed as she lays back in her chair. It's a warm night for October, still somewhere in the park of eighty degrees, and she thinks she could sleep out here, never mind the fact she just took a nap. There's a breeze, and school's hauled most of the kids back towards their homes. It's quiet.

But then Astro brushes a hand against her arm. When she looks down, they've written:

**'Last week. Were you serious about the Daimon thing?'**

And she's so much less tired, just like that.

"Not trustin’ them?" she asks, lifting her eyes to meet theirs. "Yeah."

They blink at her, slow and languid.

**‘Why?'**

It's the question everyone keeps asking her, time after time after time. So few of the kids get her fucking mistrust, but what have the daimons ever done for them, except ruin everything? The town had been calm. Nobody'd been sleep-walking, she thinks, even two years back. But then Thee-I-Dare had come slinking into the town, whispering in folks ears, and everything had started going to hell.

After he'd come to town, she'd started finding traps in the woods. Kids had started going missing, waking up on the train tracks, waking up in the middle of the river, their pants soaked and their memories empty, and the adults..

The adults had gone strange, shifty-eyed and mealy-mouthed, and they'd locked down the whole damn town, one excuse at a time. And then kids had started going missing. The news claims one of Marie's classmates, some girl named Madi-Shaw, offed herself. But the club says she was taken.

The club says all the kids get taken by CHORUS - by their parents - and they never, ever come back - and none of that, none of it at fucking all, had happened before the Voices.

She doesn't know how to say all of that, though. She's tried, over and over, and everyone just treats her like a fool. So she shrugs instead. "D'you really think they're lookin' out for you, Astro?" she says instead, dry. "D'you really think they're lookin' out for any of us?"

Their face does something queer, then. Their mouth tightens, the skin pulling back like something's pinching at the back of their head. If they spoke, maybe, their voice would be strained - but isn't the way they drag the pen, jerky and slow, a match enough for that? They write so slow, she thinks they must be trying to argue.

 **‘No,’** they write instead, the letters blocky, and they mouth the word with it.

"Bold," she says. "So what d'you think?"

She could watch Astro's face while they write, but there's not much point to it. They manage to put so many of their feelings into the swirl of their pen, instead. **'They're bigger than us,’** they write, the word swelling in the center, and then: **_‘- much bigger,’_ ** with two lines under much. **‘They don't play by our rules.’**

**‘And they don't like us very much. Most of them.'**

"All of 'em," she corrects, but she keeps her voice gentle. Dance-for-Us had spoken to Anya in a dream. She'd screamed at her, practically, voice loud enough that she'd woken up with her heart racing, her hands clutching her ears. Anya can’t hear lots of things, in the flesh, but in her dreams -

"Have you ever heard even one speak fondly of a human?"

 **‘Some pretend,’** they write, and the letters are smaller.

When she leans forward, elbows resting on the edge of her chair, they change the period to a question mark.

"The way I see it," she says, because she's thought about this, night after night, turning and flipping and spinning it with Xaviul 'til they're both sick with the know of it: "- they're a package deal. Where one goes, the others.. follow. If you can't have one without all of 'em.."

She shrugs, slow. "If you can’t have one without everythin' that comes with 'em - all of our folks gettin’ jacked - then why should we have any of it at all? It doesn't make common sense. They ain't doin' nothing to help us. All they do is hurt."

 **‘Can we do that?** ’ Astro asks, and her mouth’s opening, but they’re already holding up a new page: **‘They're made by us.'**

Anya pauses.

She hadn't known that. There's a lot she doesn't know about daimons, but.. there's a lot she doesn't know about folks, either. She never knew anything about friends, but she's made two, the last month. Maybe she’s even made three, because ain’t she and Astro sitting out here, talking like they’re friends? You don't, she thinks, need to know things to just go ahead and do 'em.

"It’s like math. If we made 'em," she says, with confidence that grows with each word: "- then we can un-make 'em, too."

This time, they let the silence hang. But when something brushes her arm again, Anya's expecting it.

 **‘Do you think we can?’** Astro writes.

She lifts her chin. "Do we have any other option?" she asks. "We gotta try, else - what're we even doin' out here? Rotting?"

Some of the kids think that the Madi-Shaws girl is dead. Anya isn’t sure where she sits on that. But she’s seen the traps out in the woods. She’s been dragged by lucids before, their faces shifting even as they’d lied, and lied, and lied, trying to take her to some place where nobody ever came back from.

It doesn’t matter if she’s dead or alive, she thinks. It doesn’t matter if any of the missing kids are. Because if they’re all left huddling together in the woods, hiding.. waiting…

It’s just a different kind of death.

“I’m not waiting around for some Voice to save us,” she says, slow. The words feel right, but the way Astro’s looking at her makes her want to swallow them whole, like a frog in her throat. But that’d be a lie, wouldn’t it?

Parents lie. Anya’s always tried to make sure she doesn’t, even if nobody wants to hear it at all.

“And if you're smart..” She reaches out, rapping her fist into Astro’s shoulder. They’re of a height with her, scarcely an inch shorter, so it won’t hurt them none. “You won't either."

The conversation dies after that.


	3. In Which the Boxcar Children Discover a Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The use of Old Tongue in this is not fully canon compliant: nothing has been said about any effects on witnessing it, versus the toll of performing it, but for the sake of the narrative, Lovecraftian tradition, and the lack of many actual appearances of it in the canon lore at this point, I've decided that it goes both ways.. and you're more or less likely to notice it, based on the individual. Anya's just on the unluckier end of the spectrum, as she generally is.

It's six in the morning when the front door of the boxcar slams open, and Tommy shouts:

"- congratulations, tigers, we’ve hit the fucking jackpot!”

Anya doesn't sleep well during the day. She doesn't sleep well at all, if she's honest: when she closes her eyes, most nights, she starts to remember Dance-for-Us's voice. Dreams were supposed to fade. But this one just felt like it got stronger, night after night, like the Daimon hadn't spoken to her, but had dug furrows into her head instead.

If she only sleeps in bursts, so lightly that she can hear the creak of the boxcar around her, it's better. She doesn't dream of anything, then. But if she can stay awake a whole day, or two, that's the best thing of all. When her eyes are so heavy that they ache, and her body feels like it's made of lead - when she sleeps, then, she doesn't remember her dreams at all.

She's on hour thirty, according to her log, and she's already too tired to actually care. Bambi, though - she fell asleep on the weight bench, trying to write up her mission log, and now she startles so hard that she falls right off the side with a yelp. Off in the sleeping car, Anya can hear a crash, and Tommy laughs, warm and bright as the sunshine on his back.

"Oops," he says when Bambi glares at him. "C'mon, Annie wasn't upset! I didn't think you'd be asleep still - it's almost, what, seven?"

"I'm going back to bed," she tells him softly, just barely loud enough for Anya to hear, but the doorway’s blocked by the kids milling out. She dawdles by it instead, a hand on the back of her neck, and Tommy pounces on her inaction like the same glee as a cat capturing a mouse.

“Back to bed?” Tommy asks. “What, were you sleeping out here? Bambi, c’mon, that’s how you get a crick in your neck. What were you doing? Writing your log?”

“Dax wants a new inventory of the food supplies.” Everything Bambi says is so damn quiet, it hurts Anya’s ears to try and hear. “So I was writing up that.”

“He’s got you writing up an inventory after a mission? He’s working you too hard. Aren’t there other people around that can do that?” He clicks his tongue, making a show of looking around, before his gaze settles on her. “What about you, Annie? You didn’t want to help a girl out?”

Leaning down closer to her paper, Anya has to admit: her handwriting isn’t the best. Gwenna had declared it illegible, the first report she’d turned in, and Dax had had Xaviul rewrite it in the end. It’d been humiliating, and she’s determined not to let it happen again, so she’s been working when she ain’t asleep, writing up whatever thoughts she can scrounge together.

Today, that ain’t much thought at all. She’s been writing A’s, over and over and over again, and now she presses down hard enough that the lead creaks against the paper.

“I didn’t want help,” Bambi says, sharp. “I’m going to bed, Tommy.

There's only seven, eight kids that sleep in the boxcar on the regular. Xav ain't one of them, and neither is Marie, but Bambi is, and Anya's been learning the rest of their names, slowly but surely. Sharing a sleeping bag with folks'll do that, it turns out. But while there's only eight or so kids who sleep there normally, there's always a few stragglers.

Like Archer, who's glasses are resting crooked on his nose as he leans against the doorframe, blocking it just as Bambi steps up. He doesn’t notice. His hair’s still all mussed from sleeping, and his eyes look like they’re open through sheer effort alone.

"What is it?" he asks, and if he didn’t sound so groggy, maybe he’d pass as nervous.

Bambi pauses midstep, folding her arms and shuffling. Her lips move, faintly, but the words are too quiet to hear.

"Is it an emergency?" Archer asks. Bambi opens her mouth again, and this time, Anya's sure it ain't just silent to her, because no one's even looking at the older girl.

And maybe she realises it ain't gonna work if she doesn't raise her voice, because Bambi just droops with a sigh.

Anya sighs, setting down her pencil. She's too tired to care, really, but even Tommy hasn't noticed. And she knows Bambi, by now: she'd rather just go back to sleep on the weight bench than try to speak up.

She knows Tommy, too, and the scene he’d cause. He picks on everyone, but folks love him like a flower loves the sun. The boxcar kids never seem to care much about the scald he leaves behind on ‘em, so long as it means he’s paying them some mind.

But Anya cares enough for the lot of ‘em.

"Folks are trying to get to bed, so how about you move?" she snaps, brisk, and Archer pales, right before he goes red.

“Oh! I’m sorry -”

“Don’t go,” Tommy protests with a laugh. “Bambi, don’t go to bed yet! Everyone, get in here! You’re not going to believe what I fucking found. Come on, come on - get over here, I want to make sure everybody sees --” He coaxes and corralls, until Bambi’s back on the weight bench, her long legs pulled up to her face, and everyone else’s crowded around the boxcar, with him in the center.

Then he pulls open his backpack, and pulls something out.

It’s wood, Anya thinks at first, big, square wood, like the sort of signs they used to hang from posts. Tommy’s got thick, solid hands, but holding the sign makes them look as small and fine-fingered as Marie’s. There’s no words on it, though. There’s just scuffs, and paint.

“Is that from the..” Archer pauses, biting his lip. His eyes are wide behind his glasses. “Library?”

“It is,” Tommy says, pleased. Anya’s never been to the room, but she’s heard of it: fifty, sixty feet high, with cards over the walls, high as the eye can see. Marie had told her the story of how she’d tried climbing one of the ladders on the side, and slipped, and nearly ripped out her shoulderblade. Anya had decided to avoid it, just on that alone.

But when she’d said cards, Anya had pictured something smaller. Something that could slide into a machine.

“I’ve figured out what’s on it.” Tommy grins out at them, raising his eyebrows. The entire room is caught like a fish on the line, watching him: Anya doesn’t reckon that if a Lucid came knocking up on the door, any of them would so much as stir.

She can’t resent them for it. She’s caught, too.

“See, we thought they were fucked up PowerPoints, right? They were just taking them out, looking at the pictures, and putting them back in?” He pauses. His eyes are very bright. “But they aren’t,” he says. “They’re not pictures at all. Or fucking PowerPoints.”

“They’re recordings.”

Anya’s seen filmstrip. This doesn’t look like the old VCR tapes that her mother owned, and they lack the shiny gloss of the back of a CD. The plaque’s just wood, old and chipped and a little ragged, with colours like someone splattered paint all across it. At first.

But the longer that Anya looks at it, the more that it almost makes sense. There's a red curve across the top corners, almost perfectly matched. They both curve out - but then one dips in, almost imperceptibly wavering in eight little pulses.

It could've been an accident.

It could’ve been, but -

Underneath the curve, marks in the woods twist and curve in on themselves. It reminds her of the curl of a snake, hidden under the water. It reminds her of the river itself, and the gentle pulse of the water, evident even in the slowest streams. If the swells were higher pitches, and the dips were lower.. there's a tune caught at the back of her throat, so close that she could hum it, or tap it out with her heel.

"Is it for a song?" she asks, but then everyone's looking at her, and she bites back the rest of her words, face heating.

Tommy blinks at her. "Good guess," he says, but the way he says it makes it clear it's anything but. "But those usually have musical notation! I can kind of see where you got that? It's all - swoopy. But nah. It's a guideline, I think.”

“See, I saw one of ‘em into the slide, and he started moving. And I thought it was bullshit, you know? Like, maybe he was drunk - sorry, Bamb, know you don’t like that shit - but who looks at a slide and starts moving?”

“Isn’t that yoga?” someone asks. Martha, Anya thinks, with the permanently bloodshot eyes.

Tommy laughs. “Exactly,” he says, so much warmer, this time. “Exactly! I was like - shit, this is basically yoga, isn’t it? They put these big fuckers in, they look at the panels, and then they do the gesture. So I sat down, and I watched for forty fucking minutes, and I drew everything he did.”

“And we don’t have a projector in here, obvs, Dax’s gonna have to put that on our next raid goal, but -” He grins. “I drew everything he did,” he repeats, his voice bright with something that Anya doesn’t know the word for.

“So now,” he says, “I’m going to show you.”

Archer says something. His voice’s distinct enough that Anya recognises the hum of it, even if the words are too low for her to hear. But all Tommy does is laugh again, bright as the sunlight outside. “It’s fine,” he soothes, even as he steps forward into the center of the crowd, and the rest of them step back. Anya had said he was like a stone in the water, but maybe it’s not that: maybe he’s just the current, and they’re all the fish, too docile to fight against it.

The room is so quiet. Anya's ears ring with the silence, and - she misses a lot of little sounds, normally. Anya knows that, caught on when she was still young, and her grandfather would point out birdsong, or squirrel chatter, or the sound of a river when it was still what felt like miles away. It doesn't bother her. She can still hear when folks talk to her, or when they step on a twig, or the creak of the boxcar, when someone’s trying and failing to sneak on in.

As Tommy rolls back his shoulders, looks down at his feet - positions them, like he’s doing some kind of a dance - and pulls his arm down low, rigid, it feels like there ought to be a sound in the room. Someone should be - clapping, she thinks, or moving, or there should be anything at all.

But the room’s silent, save for the sound of kids breathing, low and slow. She wants to make a sound - any sound - but maybe she’s the only one.

Tommy’s hand is a fist in front of his face. A finger crooks up, and then he lifts it, swinging his arm up and out, out, out. He’s shifting his weight forward, leaning it into his knees, forming a shape in the air in front of him, and Anya's mouth feels dry. She can't look away from it, but she wants to.

It feels like she should. She can almost see what he’s forming, she thinks, or she could, but it’s like looking into the sun: for all that there’s shapes in the spots that form, she doesn’t think they’re true ones. There's a whine in the air, building, like all the room is drawing in their breath -

Then he twists his wrist in, flaring his fingers out, and just like that, she can breathe.

"That's not really right. I didn't see the last part," Tommy is saying, because the kids are all talking now, a low murmur at the edge of her hearing, "because, if you can fucking believe it, a Lucid crept up behind me and grabbed me. Like I wasn't busy!"

"They're so inconsiderate," Bambi says, dry.

“Right? But that was just the pose they were doing. I went and grabbed a bunch of slides off of the wall later, and tried putting them in? And guess what.” He leans forward. “They’re all slides,” he says. “They’re all different poses. Every single slide in that room. Do you know how many that means? D’you know what this means? It’s not just yoga.”

“I bet this is some kind of - fucking - sign language, like Astro’s been teaching us. I bet it has a syntax, and what we’re looking at is, like - part of the vocabulary, or sentence structure. Like, 二匹の犬, 三匹の犬, 四匹の犬 - maybe the swoop’s the noun, and the angle of your hand is the counter, or something like that -”

"But what does that mean?" Jacob demands, scrubbing at his eyes.

"It means something important, if they're investigating it."

 **‘Are you saying it’s like sign language?’** Astro isn't one of the kids who sleeps at the boxcar often. But they'd trudged in before the sun had fully risen, their backpack slung over a shoulder, muttering something about a holiday.

Now they're awake. There's something efficient in the way they hold up their page: they can yawn freely, without worrying about their words being distorted.

"Yeah, exactly like that,” Tommy says. “Except not just with your hands, but with your entire body."

 **‘Sign language can use your entire body,’** Astro writes, but their eyebrows are knitting. The page's scarcely up for a moment, before they're back to writing, this time on the other side of it. **‘How many gestures did you see? If it's ASL, there might be relations.’**

And after that, the conversation goes off into a flurry of voices, too fast for Anya to keep track.

There's a rock in her belly, sinking lower and lower with each pass of the word. The kids are getting excited all around her. Most everyone in the club enjoys a mystery, even when it's as little as figuring out where someone's sandwich went from the communal cooler. It gives them something to solve, she thinks: something little. Something so much more manageable than everything happening around them in Redacre.

But little mysteries are one things. A sandwich is a different beast entirely, she thinks, than -

"This deals with the Voices," she objects, her voice sharp, and it cuts through the din of noise around her like a knife.

Tommy doesn't roll his eyes. But his lips are thin, and his eyebrows go up, up, up, like he's barely a second from it. There's never a point that Anya doesn't want to knock him to the ground and hit him, but right now, the temptations so much stronger than it ought to be. Because even before he opens his mouth, she knows the tone he's going to use.

"Well, yeah," he says, gentle and dismissive, like she's dumb. "That's the point, Annie."

"It deals with the Voices," she repeats, dogged, "and that means we shouldn't go messin' with it. What good's gonna come from that? They already -" She swallows. "They already talk at us, every time we close our eyes. If this is some kinda language - like Astro's signin' - and it's coming from the cult - it's theirs. How much of your time are you going to give 'em?"

"It's not giving them anything. It's saying words. And we don't even know it's related to the Voices." He pauses. "We could ask," he says, thoughtful. "Thee-I-Dare would tell us -"

“He wouldn't tell you the truth," Anya shoots back, and Tommy does roll his eyes this time.

"Don't you ever get tired of being so fucking anxious about them? If you need a Xanax, Bambi’s got an entire prescription, but jesus christ. All they've done is help us."

Bambi flushes red, a perfect mirror to the heat in hers. "And how is this going to help us?” Anya demands, because she doesn’t know how to address that, and nobody else is opening their mouth. “Let them talk to us more? They've got words. They don't need gestures, too."

"You're so anxious,” Tommy complains, “and you're such an asshole about it." Anya's nails are digging holes into her palms, but she doesn't step forward. Not yet.

It ain't fair, but it's the fact of the matter, she's figured out, that Tommy can say whatever he wants, and folks will only start looking askance when she steps up over it. Even now, everyone's looking at the two of them, but no one's speaking up.

Not even for Bambi, who’s the sweetest thing in the club, and too soft to ever speak up for herself.

"We don't know how it can help," Tommy says, all sticky-sweet with his exaggerated patience, "but if CHORUS is using it, that means it's got some benefit, right? And if it can help them, it might be able to help us. We're kind of trying to survive here, Annie. We've got to take whatever we can take, and see if it'll do anything, if we want to survive. It's like -"

He pauses, and for one, brittle moment, Anya thinks he's following her point.

Then he opens his mouth.

"It's like a gun!"

"We don't have guns in the boxcar," Archer objects, alarmed. “Do we? I don’t think we do. We’d better not - that’s illegal -”

"It's a metaphorical gun," Tommy soothes him, holding up a hand. "Don’t lose your shit. But, like, if we had - I don't fucking know, nerf guns, so they wouldn't kill people - we'd be stupid not to use them, right? You could shoot the cellphone right out of a lucid's hand, or redirect a sleeper, or knock the glass right out of one of those drones.”

“Or, like, I don't know, soak that shit in ketchup, and then launch it up, so they can't see anything."

"Or you could shoot a lucid in the eye, tryin' to play with your foam peashooter. This isn't a cowboy flick," Anya says, flat. "Didn't your mama ever teach you not to play with a loaded gun?"

Someone in the crowd laughs. When Anya looks over, Bambi's got a hand on her mouth, but her eyes are all wrinkled enough to give it away. Tommy's looking, too, and now - he's not smiling at all.

"My mother taught me plenty of things," he says, sharp. "Easy to do when she's not busy with half the town -"

"Tommy!" Bambi says, and when he turns to look at her, his voice drops low enough that Anya can't hear it.

Maybe that's for the best, because her cheeks are heating again, and she doesn't know why. “What were you saying?” she says, but no one answers. So she raises her voice. “What were you saying about my mother -”

There's an arm slipping through hers. Astro's one of the few kids that's of a height with her, and they're easily twice her width, all stone compared to her whip-thin build. If she wanted to wriggle free, she could - but this doesn't feel like a suggestion, and besides, it ain't one that she resents. "What was he going to say?" she demands in a hushed voice, but Astro just shrugs, slow and steady, as they tug her towards the farthest cart.

It's quieter there, and near-silent when Astro pulls the cart door shut behind them. There's a few kids sleeping, their sleeping bags stretched out, and someone's brought their dog with them to the cart. It thumps its tail as Anya steps over it, and Astro leans down, dragging their fingers through its fur. The kids are still talking outside, she thinks, but she can't hear them this far: she can't hear anything but the soft pulse of people's breathing, and the creak of the lawnchair as Astro settles into it.

There's a series of crates next to it. She scrambles on top, kicking her legs out into the air as far as they'll go. Astro isn’t going to answer her question.

But, the more she thinks about it, the more queasy-certain she is that she doesn’t want to know. "I just think it's dangerous," she says instead, into the silence. "If CHORUS's doin' it, we shouldn't. Nothing they do is safe."

During the summer, they'd been keeping the ceiling panels open during the daytime. It'd kept the boxcar feeling livable, with light and sun pouring in, and all the smell of half a dozen kids living together wafting out. But it's been getting colder throughout the month. The pane's barely cracked right now, just big enough to let some rays of sunlight in, but not enough to let the breeze.

Still, it's enough for Astro to write by, and enough for her to read by, when they hold up the paper.

 **'Nothing we're doing right now is safe at all,'** they say, and when she looks at their face, they smile, their brows still knit.

"But that doesn't mean we gotta be riskier."

**'I think..’**

They tap the pen against the paper, thoughtful, and it’s a long moment before they lift it for her to see again. **‘I think we need to try new things. If we want the information out. We have to take risks.'** Their writing is so careful. **'Even if it is riskier.. what's the worse that can happen?'**

"We could die," Anya says.

 **'To die will be an awfully big adventure,'** they write, and if Anya couldn't feel her eyes widen - she'd know, just from the way they laugh, sheepish. **'That was a bad joke. Here. Let me show this.'**

Setting down their pen and paper, they hold their hands up, like they're cupping something large. Astro has thick, flat palms, square and calloused enough that they look like they shouldn't bend. But they curl their fingers down, slow and easy.

 **'Do you know what this means?'** they say, their lips moving just as carefully.

Anya shakes her head.

“It means hope," they say, their voice rusty in the quiet, and they smile at her wide eyes. "We're taking risks, Anya. But we all need to have a little."

* * *

Everywhere that Anya goes, it seems like Lavi is keen to follow.

"They like you," Marie says, amused, when Anya finds her alone one night. She's unpacking boxes of food from her backpack, granola and oatmeal that's months past expired. All of the food in the boxcar is like that: things that their parents have forgotten exist, and won't miss. "They just think you're cool, chica~. They're a baby, it'll wear off."

Anya's only a year older, she wants to object. They're no more a baby than she is. And she's never followed anyone around, not a day in her life. But Lavi -

When she leaves the boxcar most nights, Lavi is there, waiting. When she comes back from missions, more often than not, Lavi's by the well, heels kicked out, a lunchbag in hand. Anya had heard their voice, once, off in the next car, and she'd pulled her sleeping bag over her head to hide inside of it. She'd waited for nearly a whole hour like that, bated breath.

When she'd finally tugged it off, Lavi had cried out, with great pleasure: "- oh! You're awake! I was worried!"

Maybe Lavi likes her. But Anya just isn't sure she likes them.

It makes her feel strange. She's never had friends before, past just Xaviul, and it doesn't feel quite right to go snubbing one because she doesn't like them. Her mama wouldn't approve, not at all. Her mother's always been more friendly than Anya, or her grandfather before 'em. It'd been a point of contention, sometimes, with him. They'd argued, back when she was young, over how much time her mama had spent out, either at work, or with her coworkers after, doing whatever mysterious errands that she ran most nights.

But her mama had had to work, and Anya's grandfather had been too old to help out with the bills, or the money they’d needed to pay ‘em. So he'd watched Anya, and he'd complained, and if June had had to work an awful lot - at least, she'd told Anya, she always enjoyed it. She liked talking to folks. She was always asking, in her distracted kind of way, after the folks that Anya was hanging out with, and she'd seemed disappointed when the answer was always none.

Her mama would've scolded her over rebuffing Lavi. And Anya hasn't seen her mama in two months, now, but the thought of her disappointment still leaves her feeling sour.

At least she's got some friends, now, even if it ain't as many as June'd probably like. Dax's taken to pairing Anya up with Marie and Astro on the nights that she's out, now. There's been no more missions with Tommy, and he'd asked her, even, before he'd sent her out with Bambi. Anya doesn't mind Bambi, and Bambi doesn't mind her.

After Tommy bit at the both of ‘em, she thinks they're getting to be a sort of friends, in a quiet kind of way - but she prefers Marie and Astro.

It's just better, working with them. She and Bambi work in silence, just talking whenever they need to place a bug, or when some sleeper's roaming a little too close. Astro and Marie are always talking, and they're always joking, too. "We had tunnels back in Novo Hamburgo," Marie tells her one night, as they're ducking low through a tunnel, their shoulders scraping against the stone. Her voice's low, but it still bounces on the stone, echoing with each hitch of a laugh. "Mamãe said they were made by the curupiros - little men! - and, you know, I thought she was crazy? But it makes sense. If this keeps getting any smaller, we're going to end up little men, too..."

Working with Astro and Marie makes the maze almost feel tolerable.

When she was young, Anya's grandfather had told her that Redacre had been a mining town, long before any of them were born. It'd had coal, deep, deep down in the earth, and there'd been train tracks all the way from Staunton to the mines, with a train that ran three days a week, every week. The Appalachias were filthy with coal mines, and little towns like theirs that had popped up to fill them, and Redacre had just been one of many.. but it'd thrived, for a time, until the veins had emptied out, and they'd closed the mines down.

That'd been all the way back when he was a boy. His family and her grandmam's had moved all the way up from the valleys to work in the mines, and they'd shut right after, leaving them scrambling in the absence to find other ways to survive. Her grandfather had always said that the mines must be full of water by now, and sure enough..

Anya hangs over the side of the rails, her fingers wrapped tight around the round metal bas. She isn't going far enough to tip. Just far enough to look down, eyes squinting, into one of the many chasms that decorates the maze. It's a hundred feet down, she thinks, if not more, but she can see water churning at the bottom, lit up by the moonlight pouring down through a crack in the ceiling. It's hard to tell how deep it might be.

She wished she'd asked her grandfather, back when she still could.

"D'you reckon they leave this all open on purpose?" she asks, voice low. There's no sleepers around, but that doesn't mean something else might not hear them.

Astro's helping Marie down from a ladder behind her, their hand a solid weight on the small of her back. She doesn't say a word, not until she's got both feet on the ground. Getting into the maze here is one of the easiest routes, and one that Tommy'd found, long before Anya'd come into the club. There was an old mineshaft that'd fallen in on itself, but the club had managed to clear most of the rubble out in a corner of it, and it'd left a gap just large enough for the club members to slip through. For Marie, it'd been easy. She was as small as Lavi, very nearly. For Astro and Anya..

Everyone's learned to wear long sleeves by now, when they're heading down to the maze. Some of the kids spend their nights following the lucids, following them and trying to puzzle out how they head down. Those entrances - the ones tucked away in the corner of houses, or the crawlspaces under them, or the wells - they're the easiest ones, but they're the ones the adults use, too.

There's scrapes on Anya's arms, and she's pretty sure she left a chunk of her braid on one of the boards of woods she'd passed under, but Tommy had once climbed up a ladder directly into a lucid's waiting arms. She'll take the blood over that. And she's lucky in that Marie and Astro feel the same way.

There's dust in Marie's hair when she drifts over, coating the tips in a fine white powder. "What'd you say?" she asks, planting both hands on the rail and tipping forward to look down at the water. The caves empty all around them, but that doesn’t stop Anya from taking a cautious glance around. "Holy shit, this is deep, isn't it?"

 _‘I could push you in,’_ Astro signs with a flit of their hands, mild, looming behind the two of them. Or at least, Anya thinks they’re saying that. There’s a jerk of their thumb towards themself, then a shove of their exposed palms. She hasn’t learned the signs, but that seems clear enough.

Sure enough, Marie bristles: "You could try -"

“Shhh,” Anya murmurs, because they’re still underground. Marie laughs, soft and apologetic.

“Sorry. Right, right, gatinha, my bad.” She turns around, sliding up on the rails until she’s half-perched on it, her feet kicking down towards the ground. She’s a round girl, all circles and points, the sharp edges of her hair a perfect match to the pointiness of her elbows. “Okay.” Marie runs a hand through her hair, showering dust on the ground around her. “Okay! You remember the plans, kids?”

Astro’s barely two years younger than her, but they just nod, slow and solemn.

“Step one - we get in.” She grins at them, spreading out her fingers. “So far, so good. Step two, we get down to their murder dungeon, and we steal some food.”

“I don’t reckon I want to go to a murderdungeon,” Anya says, slow, and Astro shifts to look at her.

She’s learning sign. She is! They’ve spent enough time going over them, and so much of it, she reckons, is just something you pick up. Still, he’s slow and careful as they gestures, fingers slow enough that it’d be impossible to miss: _‘She’s joking. It’s a cellar.’_

“Biggest cellar I’ve ever seen,” Marie says, easy. “And I’ve never seen one with beds in it.”

_‘No one is murdered there.’_

“No one’s murdered there, far as we _know.”_

“Why do they have food down there?” Anya breaks in, because if she doesn’t, she’s caught onto their game: they’ll just keep going and going, the two of ‘em, until they run out of words, or a lucid comes to pick ‘em up.

And she’s never seen ‘em run out of words yet.

“I don’t know why they have food down there, but I know I’m tired of eating old shit. I know Tommy’s doing his best, but..” Marie pops to her feet, rolling her shoulders back in a shrug. “I’m tired of eating protein bars,” she says, wry. “I don’t need any more protein! We’ve got enough peanut butter, I want some vegetables.”

All around them, the room’s quiet. There’s no sign of any of the adults - the sleepwalkers, or even the lucids - and Anya doesn’t even hear the skittering of rats. A cool wind blows in from below them, carrying the smell of the water, and standing here, right now.. it’s almost peaceful.

Part of her wants to just stand here and banter, because Astro’s hands are moving again, too quick for her to read this time, and the skin under Marie’s eyes is bunching in the prelude to a laugh. But it’s too wide open here. There’s too many doors, and Anya can’t keep an eye on all of the openings around them.

It’s quiet right now, but someone could come at any given moment.

“Let’s move,” she says, just as Marie’s opening her mouth, and the two of them look at her like they’ve forgotten she’d come along at all.

“Alright, chica,” Marie says. “Astro! Lead the way.”

The two of ‘em keep talking as they walk.

The conversation’s going too fast for her, now that Astro’s in the front, the both of their hands blocked by the width of their shoulders, but that’s just fine. A few months ago, maybe she wouldn’t have known how to deal with this sort of thing: the way that Marie and Astro drift ahead of her, their heads leaned in, their shoulders near close enough to brush. The easy way that they laugh, like they haven’t got a care in the world, or like they grew up together - because they practically have, ain’t they? It’s something she’s seen on the television, but not something she’s grown up with. Not something she’d ever really seen in the flesh, before this.

She and Xaviul don’t act like this.

But she’s gotten used to it, and the easy way that the two of them exclude her. She doesn’t know the food they’re talking about. She doesn’t know the people’s names that keep slippin’ out of them, smooth as water, nor the places they talk about. (Alexandria, Snowden - she’s seen them on the maps, but Astro and Marie have been there.) She doesn’t need to, though. The two of ‘em can act like proper fucking kids, strolling through the woods, if they want.

Because for all that they’ve forgotten where they’re at, Anya hasn’t. And that’s why she’s the only one who notices that someone’s fucking following them.

Marie takes the lead on their makeshift trail, and she’s clambering across the maze like she was born to it. It’s the high-ground, all the way across: the maze is a straight-up mine, full of rafters and rails and wires that stretch paper thin but steel straight across the ceiling. It’s full of easy footholds. It’s full of easy handholds, practically built for their slender frames, and if Astro’s struggling, their strength more than makes up for it.

They keep off the ground, the main throughway where it looks like hundreds of feet have walked. They stick to the ledges, teetering ten, fifteen feet ahead, shadows dancing at the edge of their eyes, and the light flickering low enough below ‘em that it doesn’t so much as touch their feet. The maze’s empty and bare, for the most part.

They see a few heads drifting through as they head in further, but not many: white-cowled figures that never look up, with the uneasy, too-certain gait that always makes the hair on the back of Anya’s neck rise. No lucids, then. Only sleepwalkers, led along their paths like a sheep on a rope by the Voice in their head.

And none of ‘em bother to look up. They pass overhead like shadows, without so much as casting a pebble down as they go, and if Anya hadn’t started hearing sounds behind her, she mightn’t have noticed their tail at all.

But in the silence, the echo of shifting stones seems to ring like a drum, even to her damaged ears. The first time, she figures it’s a rat. There’s nothing behind ‘em when she looks back, not so much as a cloud of dust, and the mines’ must be filthy with vermin, with as much trash as the sleepers leave around.

The second time that she hears rocks shift behind her, like someone’s boot hit the gravel and slid, she can’t dismiss it as easily. She doesn’t look back this time. She just takes another four, five steps, then huffs, sharp enough to be a swear. Marie looks back. “Gatinha -”

“I’m fine,” Anya says, crisp. “Keep walkin’, I just need to retie my boot.”

Marie’s eyebrows go up, even as her gaze flits down. But when Anya jerks her chin, sharp, she does keep walking, though her pace’s slowed.

Anya’s laces are just fine. They’re double-knotted in a tangle so strong that it takes her a pencil in the mornings to pry it free. But she make a show all the same of leaning down, lacing her fingers between the two ears of twine and tugging them sharp. Her ears are straining hard enough that they’re practically ringing with the effort. She can hear the rush of her own blood in them, the catch of her breath, but at first, nothing else.

But then she hears rocks shift.

One breath, and she doesn’t look back. Two breathes, and the rocks move again, slow but steadier this time. Three, and Anya whirls around, half-crouched, her hand already curled into a fist.

From ten feet away, someone startles, then stops midstep.

They’re small-framed and dark, with liquid black eyes that remind her of a dogs: wet, soft, and keen enough to make her wary. There’s something familiar about them, and for one heart-stopping moment, she thinks they might be a lucid. Her hands already on her knife, for all of her promises, and she’s taking a step back, her mouth opening wide to shout. But then her eyes catch up with her mind. There’s no white on their clothes, no red, not so much as a single speck of brown. There’s none of CHORUS’s clean-cut lines, and the only eyes staring at her are liquid and dark: thick-lashed, wet, and deceptively soft.

They’re wearing a mask, and clothing that looks like it ought to be in a gym. It’s grays and blacks, all the way down: like a deer's spots, Anya thinks, because even as she’s staring at them, she almost doesn’t want to pay them mind. They blend into the soft walls of the mines like they’re just another protrusion, and even the spacks of white in their eyes might be just another kind of pebble.

It’s like camouflage, she thinks, and -

Of course it is.

“You fucking _rat_ ,” she snarls, and moves.

The kid - because they’re thin-framed and small, still too lean and shapeless to be any adult - bolts.

There’s a hiss of breath behind her. Marie, probably, trying to ask what she’s doing. But Anya’s already in motion. Her boots hit the ground in a puff of dust, and they’re just worn down enough that they sink hard, hard enough for her to launch forward. The kid is wheeling back. Above their mask, their dark eyes are wide.

By the time she’s broaching the space between them, they’ve already turned and bolted.

But Anya’s always been a big girl: her ma used to say that she’d taken after her, all fond and soft, and even a few months in the boxcar with their lean meals haven’t been enough to stop the way she’s shot up. One lunge, and she’s already near enough that her fingers skirt the kids’ shoulder. They’re running, with no regard towards the sound that they’re making, and if things were fair, they’d be faster. They’d already gotten a headstart.

But life ain’t, and Anya’s all legs, with arms nearly long enough to match. Two strides forward, and she’s close enough to grab. Three, and her fingers are tangling in the scarf, jerking back hard, hard enough that it half-throttles them mid-leap. Then her hands grabbing hold of a shoulder.

Then she’s grabbing them by the wrist and yanking them up high, at the end of her reach. They kick out, but they’re stubby, this little wretch: they can’t reach, for all that they’re trying.

She hauls them high, high, high up into the air, high enough that their feet aren’t even scraping the ground. The kid thrashes in her arm like a caught rat, but Anya’s held rats before, and cats, and a fox that’d bit her right on the arm, deep enough that its fangs had caught tight in the weave of her shirt. She hadn’t let go of those, and the only thing this kid has over ‘em is the sheer size, and not by much.

When she shakes them, they wheel back a hand hard and land it right into her stomach, strong enough to knock the air right out. But she doesn’t let go. “You’re hurting me!” the kid cries, high and plainative, and something about it seems very nearly familiar. “Let go -”

She doesn’t let go. There’s a splash of pain ripping through her gut and all the way up her throat, sharp as bile, and that blow was hard enough, she thinks, that it might very well bruise. But the way they cry out when she shakes them again does nothing for the pain. The way they flinch when she grabs hold of the cloth, though - the cold satisfaction of it very nearly quells it as she takes hold, and wrenches -

\- and drops them, just like that, because it’s Lavi’s red-flushed face staring back at her, their cheeks wet with tears. Their eyes aren’t blue today: they’re dark brown, liquid and overflowing.

“Oh!” they cry out, but it’s not a word, not properly: it’s just one big wet sob as they curl their arm around their shoulder, fingers hovering like a bandage over a wound. “Oh!”

“Anya!” Marie snaps. She’s being shoved aside as the older girl swoops in. When Marie presses a hand, delicate, to Lavi’s shoulder, they flinch back with a little cry.

The look that she shoots Anya is nothing short of murderous. Anya’s face is hot. “It’s not -” she protests, but Marie isn’t looking at her: she’s wiping the hem of her shirt across Lavi’s face, dabbing at the tears as gently as if they were nearly seven years younger.

They’re thirteen, Anya wants to protest. Barely a year younger! But she’s got nearly a foot over her, and even in her head, even talking to herself, the words taste like an excuse in her mouth.

“Hush, hush - ah, baby, why were you following us?”

“You said I couldn’t come,” Lavi says, and Anya’s never heard someone sound like they’re weeping, before, but each breath’s coming out like a promise of tears. “But I just - I just -”

“You just what?” Marie prompts, gentle.

“I just wanted to help!” Lavi cries, and then they burst into tears.

The worst part of it all is that they’re silent. If it was some big, gasping affair, Anya might’ve been able to ignore it. She’s seen plenty of that on the television, and she knows how folks fake it. She’s never cried like that, like if any air stays in her lungs, she might go and die for it.

Lavi isn’t crying like that. They weep like they can’t help it, tears rolling down their nose and their cheeks in streams as heavy as any rainfall. Their nose is going blotchy, their eyes are streaking with red, but for all that their breath’s coming out in wet, desperate gasps, they’re soft, and there’s resentment burning bright in their eyes. If they’d been sad, Anya might’ve thought they were faking it.

But they’re just angry, and the sight makes her step back, pressing a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says, weak. “I didn’t -”

“You’ve got to be more careful, girl,” Marie says. She isn’t looking at her, but she doesn’t need to: Anya wilts at the tone all the same, her shoulders drawing up. “Both of you. Stop crying, babe, alright? You’re fine.”

“My shoulder hurts,” they say bitterly.

Marie lets go of her shirt, brushes away the tears from their face with the back of her hand instead. “It’ll hurt a lot more,” she says, gentle, “if a lucid sees us sitting here. C’mon, babe. You wanted to go on the mission with us? Then let’s go.”

Astro clears their throat behind Anya. When she looks at them, their mouth is a thin line, and their eyebrows are knit, but they sign:

_‘- good job.’_

Astro doesn’t do sarcasm. Not like this. But it doesn't feel like praise, though, not when Marie's making such a point of keeping a buffer between her and Lavi as they fall in step with the rest of 'em.

Lavi's tears are finally drying, but they've left tracks across their face. It's too uncomfortable to look at them like that, tear-streaked and red, so Anya doesn't: she watches Astro's hands instead, because they're back to signing, the gesture's crisp enough to match their expression.

 _‘You can't just follow us,’_ they're signing, Anya thinks. It's going a little too fast for her to keep up, but she's piecing it together from the flashes she can get. _‘You're not that small. We could have mistaken you for an adult, and put you to sleep.’_

"What Lucid looks ten?" Marie's voice is as dark as stormclouds on the horizon. Anya wilts, but when she looks side-long -

Astro doesn't look much sweeter.

_‘Sophia's mother is Lavi's size. And how could we tell if it's her or them, when they have a mask on?’_

"Maybe the skin," Marie says, dry. "Might be a little bit of an indicator, Astro."

 _‘They could have drawn attention to us.’_ They’re being dogged. _‘What if a Lucid saw them, instead of Anya? What if they'd gotten hurt, and nobody had noticed? What if -’_

Lavi snuffles, and Marie holds up a hand. 

"Bosta, bosta, bosta - we're not arguing about this in the _cave_ ," she snaps, pressing a hand to her head. "Lavi shouldn't have snuck along. Anya shouldn't have mauled them. We should have noticed. Everyone fucked up, so let's just - get the mission done, and go, before anything else happens, alright?" 

The rest of the mission goes on in silence.

* * *

It’s breaking dawn when they get back to the woods. Marie peels off early, Lavi in tow. “I’ll make sure they get home safe,” she says. Her eyes are still steely when they meet Anya’s. “Don’t get in any trouble, yeah?”

It’s not a request.

Astro follows them back to the clubhouse, step-by-step, and for all that Anya knows that it isn’t a punishment, she can’t help but feel like a poorly trained hound. They haven’t scolded her. They haven’t looked at her in askance, for all that it’s the way most of the club does - for all that it’s the way that Marie’s been, the last few hours, checking in with side-long looks to make sure she isn’t about to go rabid. All Astro’s done is lay a hand on her shoulder, gentle and heavy despite it, in something that she’s convinced might very well be intended as a comfort.

But it doesn’t feel like one. It feels like yet another sign of shame, and as soon as the boxcar’s in their sights, she pulls away. “I’m going to go fish,” she says stiffly. She doesn’t give them time to respond.

She’s too impatient to fish. The first time that her line snaps, she throws it into the river. The current rips it away without so much as a by-her-leave, leaving her bare-handed, and it’s only when she turns and starts rummaging through her bag that she realises that it was her last hook. If she was in a better mood, it might’ve made her laugh.

Instead, she sits down on the shoreline, buries her face in her knees, and shrieks right into the well-patched fabric of her jeans.

Xaviul finds her like that, thirty minutes later, her arms wrapped so tight around them that she doesn’t even notice him come up, not until he places a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says gently when she looks up. He’s got dust streaked across his cheeks, like he just climbed out of the mines, too. “Um. Marie mentioned the last mission. Are you okay?”

She glares at him, and his smile goes crooked.

“Okay, yeah, guess that was a stupid question. Can I sit down?”

“I’m not stopping you,” she says, sour, and it’s the sort of tone that’d get her a crack across the head from her grandpa. But he’s dead, and Xaviul’s always been a sweeter soul. He just sits down, nice as anything, and he doesn’t even bother dusting the dirt off of the rocks before he does it. That’s how she knows he’s concerned.

She doesn’t want to feel guiltier, not on top of everything else. It’s not fair. There’s tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, but that isn’t fair, either. She isn’t Lavi. She ain’t about to go crying.

She isn’t Lavi, with their sprung arm and pain. She doesn’t have the cause to be crying, she reminds herself, but that thought doesn’t help stem the heat, not at all.

“We haven’t been talking a lot lately,” Xaviul says, and she’s bitterly grateful that he isn’t looking at her. He’s staring out across the water instead, his gray eyes soft, like they’re focusing on something she can’t quite see. “Dax keeps putting me with Tommy. It works out, I guess, but.. it’s not leaving much time for us to talk, is it? And that sucks.” 

“We talk every morning.” Every morning that he’s in the boxcar, at least. It’s convenience in part, and Anya knows it: it’s just easier to keep two plaits when somebody else is doing it for you.

“Not _talk_ -talk. We haven’t just.. had much time to hang out, is all. I miss it,” he says, and Anya’s throat has a lump in it, suddenly. “How’re you holding up?”

“We’re out in the woods, livin’ in a fucking boxcar, and eating food out of some basement caves, and traps,‘cause our folks went and got themselves fucking possessed,” she drawls, swiping hard at her nose with her sleeve. She isn’t about to start crying. She won’t, and so she makes her tongue sharp, instead, coats it in enough syrup that there’s no room left for tears at all. “And we got kids all over us all day long, ‘cause ain’t a lot of us got anywhere else to go, and then all night long, we’ve got demons in our ears, tryin’ to ask all us nicely to let them possess us. ‘course I’m alright, Xav. Why wouldn’t I be alright?”

His laugh’s more of a huff. “That’s - wow, okay. That’s a little mean,” he says, bumping his knee against hers, and now he looks at her, the edge of his mouth curled up in a wry kind of smile. “You’re in a mood, I guess.”

And he’s teasing, but -

“Oh, no,” he says, alarmed. “Are you crying?”

“I am not crying,” she snuffles, and buries her face back into her knees. It’s a lie. It’s a lie, and worse yet, it’s a clear one, and she never lies, and - the thought just makes the tears come harder. “Tommy hates me. Gwen thinks I’m a hick. Not just her - all the kids do. Everyone here does.”

“I don’t,” he says, laying a hand on her shoulder. He awkwardly pats it, but Xav’s always a little awkward about everything he does, and she leans into it all the same. “And I don’t think Marie, or Lavi, or Astro do, either -”

“They just think I’m a feral dog instead. I hurt Lavi.” Her eyes are treacherous critters, burning steadily despite all of her blinks. “I didn’t mean to,” she says, bitter, “but it doesn’t matter, does it? Didn’t mean to hurt your ma, either. I don’t mean to hurt anybody, but it just - it keeps happening, and - I don’t know - it’s not fair, Xav. I don’t know what to do.”

“Have you considered just.. not?” he asks, careful.

She wants to bare her teeth at him. If she was an animal, she would. But she ain’t. She’s fucking civilized, so she just grimaces instead, rubbing her palms hard into the hollows of her eyes. It makes lights, just bright enough to sting, just sharp enough a pain to stem some of the leaking. “Just stop,” she repeats. “Don’t think it’s that easy.”

“Of course it is.” He lifts his hand, but it’s only to tug at one of her plaits. “Anya. C’mon, look at me,” he coaxes, and when she looks up, his eyes are bright, but they ain’t unkind.

“If you don’t want to do it,” he says, earnest, “then don’t. Think a little more, okay? Take a breath, turn it over, and then - if you want to, and if it seems smart - you can do it. But don’t do it, just because you’re..”

“Haring after it like a dog with a rabbit?” she asks, and he laughs, wrinkling his nose.

“Sure! Why not? Don’t be like the dog with the rabbit. Be like.. a dog in a dog show?”

“I’ve never seen one of those.”

“We’re getting off track,” he says, “and we’re losing the metaphor, here. Um. Just - think about it more, before you do things, and it’ll be fine. You didn’t hurt Lavi. I think everyone’s just spooked that you could have, but if we’re honest..” He shrugs.

“We could all hurt people. The rest of us are just.. trying to make sure we don’t.”

Half of his words feel like thorns in her shoes, but Xaviul’s always had a good hand on how to handle her. The words feel harsh, but there’s no harm meant in ‘em, not when he’s looking at her like this, bright-eyed and earnest and honest as with any other fact he’s told. It’s not a truth that she likes, but when has it ever been, these past few months?

“Alright,” she says, and she scrubs at her face with the back of her hand. The knees of her jeans are soaked straight through, but that’s just fine. They’ll dry. “Alright. I’ll try.”

“Don’t try,” he informs her, standing up. “Just do better, and everyone’ll warm up to you. Trust me.”


	4. In Which Anya Hears the Hot Goss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic hasn't been forgotten, I am just very lazy, and also failed to realise - oh dear, it's been six months!
> 
> We're going to see if I can roust myself into posting weekly updates. So check in next Saturday, and we'll see if I succeed. :)
> 
> Much love, as always, to my betas. You're the best.

So she does better.

Lavi skitters around her like a wounded beast, their eyes wide, their mouth twisted into a quavering kind of _sorry_ whenever she looks at them a moment too long. They’d been full of apologies after the moon had swung back up and the lot of them were back in the clubhouse, and Anya’d wished it’d been the mealy-mouthed sort she could disregard.

But Lavi’s apologies were earnest in the same way that everything they did was. A lot of the clubhouse lied as easy as they breathed, for all they hid it as jokes and games, and half of their sorries were just more of the same. Tommy’s always came with a laugh at the back of his throat, like he couldn’t bear to hold it back all the way: even Gwenna’s were reluctant, wry, crisp in a way that made Marie look like a fool for needing it, the one time Anya’d seen it.

Lavi’s didn’t feel like a game. They were just..

“I just think you’re _cool,”_ they’d said, despairing, like each word was another step towards the noose and Marie’s heavy hand on their shoulder was leading them to it. “I just think you’re really, _super_ cool, and I just.. wanted to be _involved?_ I just wanted to be a part of things. Because you’re all just, like, super _nifty,_ and it’s so _lonely,_ always having to text info from _home,_ and I just wanted to be _near_ you guys -”

Lavi’s were just _something,_ that’s all.

But Anya accepts the apology with a stiff kind of grace, for the way Marie looks at her says there ain’t any other call. And she doesn’t bite when Tommy calls her _Annie,_ and she doesn’t rankle when Xaviul wakes her up, shaking her so roughly that one of his braids swings right into her face.

“What d’you _want?”_ she snaps, but she swallows down the worst of her venom, and she doesn’t shove him. She just _scowls_ until he rocks back on his heels, mouth twisted to the side.

“I had a dream,” he says. Xaviul’s eyes are perfect moons in the hollows of his face. It’s a strange thing to think of them as kin, but times like this, he almost looks like her ma, right down to the way the light catches in his clear gray eyes. “From _Laugh-Last._ He spoke to me, Anya. _Me, personally.”_

And isn’t it the biggest testament of all to the fact she’s reining herself in, that she doesn’t go off like a bottle rocket? But there’s anger fizzing in her throat like a promise of something awful as Xaviul explains, careful and wary as if she were a dog waiting for a reason to bite, and with a brittle, delicate kind of excitement under all of it.

She doesn’t bite. She spares him her words, and she keeps her mouth shut as he leads her into the main boxcar, where the rest of the kids are waiting.

Tommy’s sprawled out across the exercise bench, taking up the entire damn thing, his legs stretched long over the sides. Archer’s perched on one of the broken doors, and the two of them keep ripping chunks of paper off of their notebooks to toss at each other’s heads. Anya doesn’t recognise most of the others still, not by name, and she doesn’t move towards sitting ‘til Xaviul takes the lawnchair nearest to the door and swings a hand for her to join him.

The rest of the kids pay it no mind. They’re all busy doing their own things, up until Xaviul clears his throat and says:

“Laugh-Last spoke to me last night.”

Anya’s settled hard into her chair, her arms folded, her face even. She thinks of stones, and she thinks of water, and the way that _that_ never minds what’s going on, or who’s talking to it. The water’s full of babbling, the sound of the few dozen animals that live within it and everything that goes on throughout it, and it’s never needed folks paying it any mind.

It’s never cared about any of that in the slightest bit, and neither will fucking _she_.

“Really!” A ball of paper soars down from Archer’s door. Tommy snatches it midair, smoothing it out, then clicks his tongue as soon as he’s taken in the sight. From here, Anya can see it: a stick figure, with letters too small to see proper, and another overlaid on top of it. “What’d he say? Was it an ass joke? Archer, this is bullshit.”

“It’s what I saw,” Archer says, mild, and then: “- it’s not always ass jokes. Maybe it was one about his mom.”

“Did you see _right?_ ” Tommy wrinkles his nose. Anya’s heard some of the girls call him handsome, but she hasn’t been able to see it: boy looks like a woodpecker, between his nose and the red of his bushy old brows. “I’ve never seen ‘em do their arms like that, dude,” he says. “It’s always been some straight-up football shit.”

“I’m sure -”

“It wasn’t an ass joke _or_ a mom joke,” Xaviul interrupts, still with that brittle kind of energy. He doesn’t get angry, not like her. Xaviul’s always cool as the river: even when the rest of the room’s hot, he’s chill to the bone, and right now, his words are cold enough to cut right through the jokes. Archer and Tommy are watching him, bright-eyed and wry respectively, but both _quiet._ Listening.

It’s not a reaction that _Anya’s_ ever gotten.

She leans back in he chair, and she counts to ten.

“It was a reminder,” Xaviul continues. “He said it’s been funny keeping our asses out of the fire, but we have to be more careful. Daimon or not, they’re not _always_ watching us.”

“Are they getting into the lucid’s heads? Or the sleepwalkers?” Archer leans forward, bracing his hands on his knees. His glasses have a smudge in them, right across the lense, and there’s dark streaks under his eyes. A lot of the club kids have those, lately. “Because I didn’t think that was possible. You can only hear one Voice at a time, can’t you?”

“I’ve heard two before,” one of the girls sitting on a table says. Cindy, Anya thinks. Cindy Lao. She doesn’t know the other girls name, but her friend’s sitting near enough that their shoulders are touching, their fingers linked together, and she gives a squeeze as Anya watches. “They were talking over each other. In a dream, I think. Um - a man - and, ah.. the woman who..”

“Peppy, or throaty?” Archer asks.

Cindy chews on her cheek. “Peppy,” she says, slow, “but she sounded our age. Not old, like some of them. Really cheerful. Really _bright.”_ “Dance-for-Us,” Tommy says, decisive, and then pauses, wrinkling his nose. “Who would _she_ have been talking to?

“Um.”

“Thee-I-Dare? _Nah._ Those two don’t like each other.” Tommy looks up towards the ceiling. “TID says she’s a coward, and she says he’s _boring,”_ he says, tapping his chin, and - he’s like a squirrel, Anya decides, sour. He never can stop _moving,_ even for a second. “But can’t be TMC! I’ve never heard them even mention each other at _all.”_

“The man was..” Cindy pauses. “He’s the one that’s - always talking about that other one - the - uh -” Her friend squeezes her hand again, and she swallows, hard enough that her throat bobs with it. “Um -”

“In-Her-Teeth?” Xaviul says.

Cindy beams. It’s like watching clouds passing over the sun: there’s that short moment of brilliance, before she retreats back to her former quiet. “Yes. Her!”

“Oh. What? _Laugh-Last?_ In-Her-Teeth - _that’s_ his wife.” Tommy’s looking at Cindy sidelong. “So, why would he bother with anyone else?” he asks, doubtful. “Not much reason, if you ask me -”

“Do folks only talk to their _wives,_ now?” Anya says, flat, and the whole conversation freezes, like everyone forgot she was even in it.

With Xaviul, the silence had felt respectful. It’d felt _normal._ But now it just feels like nobody’s sure what to say. Tommy opens his mouth, then he shuts it, eyeing her - and everyone’s eyeing her, like she’s a dog that just knocked over the can - and it’s Cindy’s friend that saves the day by laughing, something just short of a bray that shatters the silence like spring’s ice.

Archer laughs next, drier, and then the rest of the room joins in, a wave of titters that bounce on the walls. Tommy’s face goes still.

“She does make a good point,” Archer points out, because _his_ doesn’t: he’s damn near smirking, the first time that Anya’s ever seen him make the face. “People _do_ talk to more than their wives, usually.”

“Aw, c’mon, get off my jock. You knew what I meant.” All around her, people titter, and Anya can’t figure if it’s at _him_ or if it’s at _her._ It’s enough to make her want to bristle, but she doesn’t: she holds in the thought, and she keeps her eyes on Tommy as he rolls his eyes, his mouth twisting into a dry kind of smile. The expression’s strained.

When he looks at her through his lashes, she smiles.

“It’s not important,” he says suddenly, rolling his eyes, and he bounces to his feet, striding over to Cindy and her friend with long, quick steps. Tommy’s big. He ain’t quite Anya’s size, not yet, but the way he’s been shooting up the last month, she expects it won’t be long.

He doesn’t need to be her side to loom over Cindy, anyway, not when she’s all curled up in her chair. Her head tilts back, her cheeks flushing, and her friend bumps against her shoulder, her mouth twisting into something that’s not quite a smile. “What’s important is - how did you hear them?” Tommy demands. “And what did they even have to _talk_ about? Dance-for-Us only ever wants to throw ragers. I mean, we’ve all fucking heard _that,_ pretty sure.

“And Laugh-Last - well. I guess he parties, sometimes. Probably. But he’s more..”

He glances around the room, like someone’ll step in and take over. But no one pipes up. “Desperate,” Tommy finally settles on. “He’s _way_ more desperate. DFU is cool! He’s like, that weird fucking loser at the train station that begs for smokes, especially since he got fucking _dumped.”_ He pauses. “Oh. Wait. _Shit.”_

 _“_ Was he whining for her number?” he demands. “He doesn’t deserve to date _Dance-for-Us,_ christ, that’d be a fucking mess.”

“Do voices have numbers?” Cindy’s friend asks, amused. “Do they have _cellphones_ now? Shit, and here I thought they were just _brain-worms_ in our _flesh-apples._ ”

“Oh, _Martha,”_ Cindy hisses, her face paling.

“Hey, Tommy,” the girl - Martha - says, barreling on, “maybe you can ask TIDDY how the phone service is, up on the astral plane..”

When Martha says that, and the words hang in the quiet, Anya’s not sure what he’ll _do._ He picks and picks and picks on the other kids all night long, but folks don’t jostle too much with Tommy. Or maybe Anya just ain’t around to see it on average - but she doesn’t think it’s that, not quite, not when his face goes so still.

She’d compared him to a woodpecker, but now, Anya thinks, he’s holding himself like a copperhead that just got uncovered, whole body tense as it considers if it’ll strike. It feels like an eternity for him to get his thoughts together.

“What is this, attack-Tommy day?” he complains at last, and Cindy’s friend laughs, leaning forward so that her elbows are on her knees.

“We could _make it -”_ Cindy clears her throat, and Martha hushes, though she’s still smirking.

“They were being mean about Thee-I-Dare,” Cindy says, a little sheepish. Tommy’s eyes brighten, like a hound sighting prey, but Martha’s got her hand, and she barely hesitates at all. “And they were calling him some pretty mean things. But they’re both kind of really mean, aren’t they?”

“Annie would say they’re _all_ mean,” Tommy says, but Anya refuses to look at him again. She’s just looking at Cindy instead, who smiles at her, a little faint, a little sympathetic. But she can hear him huff, before he adds: “- what _sort_ of mean things, huh?”

“They said he was an idiot, and a coward, and a _jackass._ And.. hold on,” Cindy says suddenly, standing up, and tugging Martha with her. “I wrote it down when it happened! So I wouldn’t go and forget. I can go ahead and get the notebook -”

“How did you _write it down_?” It’s Archer’s time to play inquisitor, although Anya isn’t sure why. He’s got that doubtful edge to his words, even as he leans forward. “I thought you said it was in a dream.”

“It wasn’t my dream,” Cindy says. “It was Martha’s.”

The girl - Martha - startles. _“What?”_ Cindy jumps, her eyes as wide as any deers in the face of Martha’s glare. “I don’t remember that,” Martha says, letting go of Cindy’s hand.

“Well, you were asleep,” Cindy says slowly, like it’s striking her that each word might just be damning her further. Anya smiles at her, faint, but she doesn’t seem to even notice. “You were talking to yourself. Except it wasn’t like sleep-talking.”

She tugs a hand through her hair. It’s a long bob, sleek and black and heavy. Cindy’s one of the kids that still lives at home, and she looks like it, with jeans that Xaviul said her pa pressed flat each morning. “You were _answering_ yourself, too.”

“And when were you going to _tell me this?”_ Martha demands. There’s red creeping across her cheeks like a rash, and in the face of it, Cindy’s deflating.

“I - um -” She bites her lip. “Right now?” she offers, weak, as Martha scowls at her. “I didn’t think about it. I’m sorry, Martha.”

“Don’t be mean to her,” Tommy interjects, and the both of them look at him: Martha’s face flushed red, her green eyes narrow slits of outrage, and Cindy, pale enough that she might well be bloodless. “It’s fine. We’ve all got a lot of things going on - it’s easy to forget. Right, Cin?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “When it’d happen? Last night? Shit, sounds like Laugh-Last was _busy._ ”

“I -” She’s still looking at Martha.

But Martha just sighs, folding her arms, her lip drawn tight. “Well, go on, then,” she says. “Share with the whole class, Cin. I want to hear what _I_ dreamed, apparently, since Dance-for-Us is apparently just hijacking my _body_ as her own personal _cellphone_ while I’m _asleep._ ” She pauses. “Do you think I’m one of the good cellphones? Or -”

“You’re a $20 dollar flip phone,” Tommy says easily, and Martha’s eyes bulge. But then Cindy laughs next to her, soft, and.. it’s like watching a balloon deflate, Anya thinks, the way that Martha just folds her arms and sticks out her tongue. “Cin! The story?”

“They were talking about Thee-I-Dare.” Cindy’s looking at Tommy, for the most part, but she keeps sneaking glances back at Martha every other word. “Dance-for-Us and Laugh-Last. They were trying to figure out if he changed, I think. Because they said.. he was the worst, back in the day? Almost as bad as -” She makes the sign for Speak-as-One, a quick flick of her fingers. “- them,” she says. “Almost as bad as them.”

“So they were just lying,” Tommy says easily.

“I don’t think so,” Cindy says, and it’s firmer than anything else she’s said, firm enough that his eyebrows go up. “They sounded pretty serious. It wasn’t.. they weren’t joking, for once.”

“ _Laugh-Last_ wasn’t joking.” Tommy rolls his eyes. “That makes sense! The guy who’s entire _thing_ is making people laugh was being dead serious, in accusing his _brother_ as being as bad as the fucker that built an entire _town_ to play Barbie Cult Adventures with our sleeping bodies. The guy who wants to _save us_ and is risking his Voice life to do so is absolutely as bad as the person who, like, if you forgot, keeps strangling out their own cultmember’s _kids._ The guy who’s working constantly, even though he was _killed_ for us, is -”

“- is hated by everyone else,” Cindy says. “Don’t you ever wonder why?”

“No,” Tommy says, brisk. “I _know_ why. All the rest of the daimons want us in their gangs, but they don’t actually have anything to _offer_ us. Thee-I-Dare’s trying to save us, and give us the opportunity to actually _choose_ if we want to be fucking cultists or not, or if we want to get the fuck out of dodge. What’s Laugh-Last offering us? _Ass jokes?_ What’s Dance-for-Us offering us? The opportunity to break into our parents’ liquor cabinet? They’re _jealous,_ Cindy.

“Everyone’s always jealous of the person in their family that actually gets out and _does something_ with himself,” Tommy says. “The rest of them wouldn’t have cared if we just stayed asleep and under the big bad’s thrall forever. They’re only pissy now, because Thee-I-Dare fucked it up, and he fucked it for _us,_ and _now_ they want a piece of the pie.”

Cindy’s mouth opens, but there’s no room for her to barrel in, not when Tommy keeps talking. “They can’t fight their parents,” he says, and he’s not really even talking to Cindy anymore. He’s turned to face the entire room, his chin up, his eyes bright, and everyone..

Everyone’s watching him, their faces tilted like sunflowers towards the sun.

“They don’t have the strength, or the numbers, and honestly.. I don’t think they even _care_ to. Why should they? They’re not the ones that got hunted down,” he says, and it’d be almost like he was joking, the lightness in his voice, if it weren’t for the gleam in his eye. “They’ve just sat on their fucking asses, because they don’t have anything to lose here. If the big bad owns Redacre, who cares? They’ve still got _theirs._ But if we all leave, then what’ll they do? They’ve got an entire fucking buffet here, but it doesn’t work if Thee-I-Dare keeps showing us the exit.”

Cindy’s given up on talking. She’s settled back in her seat, her face pinched, but Martha hasn’t sat down next to her yet. “But I’m talking too much,” Tommy says with a laugh. He’s grinning a sheepish kind of grin, and if it were on anybody else, Anya’d think it was a kind of shamefaced apology. But it’s _Tommy._ “And you guys know how I feel! So, yeah. They’re just fucking around. Vote Thee-I-Dare in your next daimon election. But good to know they’re using us as microphones while we’re asleep. I guess we should all set up our phones to tape while we’re asleep, just to see if they _say_ anything.”  
  
“They’d just turn off the recorder,” Xaviul says, dry. “They can see what we’re doing, remember?”

“You just gotta outthink ‘em, dude. Get some old tech! Something ancient enough that _nobody_ knows how to use it. Annie!” Tommy says, and she closes her eyes, just for a moment. “I bet your _house_ has a tape recorder, or boombox, or some shit like that, right?”

It’d be so easy to take the bait, but Xaviul’s watching her, brows knit. So’s everyone else in the clubhouse, too. Everyone knows by now that she’s got a temper, and everyone knows, for better or worse, what Tommy does to kids with tempers. He’s like a crow in the woods: even though he knows the danger, he can’t hold off from the urge to just hop-skip up and take a pluck right out of the fox’s tail, just to hear them yowl.

Sometimes Anya thinks the fact she doesn’t just yowl, she _bites_ \- she thinks that’s just all the more lure.

“Your mom seems like she’d have a _lot_ of old stuff,” he coaxes, one corner of his mouth quirked into something that ain’t quite a smile, and -

She could bite. But Xaviul’s watching. So she takes a short, shallow breath instead, and just _shrugs,_ bland as she can make it. He wants her to yowl. She doesn’t _have_ to, not anymore than she has to do anything in this damn town, and maybe the realisation hits Tommy just as she thinks it, because his smile goes and sours.

“Oh, you’re no fun,” he complains, and turns on Xaviul instead. “Fine! If you hate the recorder idea, then what d’you suggest?” Just like that, he’s back to ignoring her, and with the drift of his attention, so’s everyone else. Folks only seem to pay her any mind when she’s _mad,_ it’s starting to seem, and when she’s not, she just fades into the boxcar, like another piece of wood in the walls.

Anya doesn’t have to react.

But the worst part of it all, Xaviul’s disappointment or no, is that Anya thinks she’d _rather._

The queer thing is that Anya expected to miss going home, after the first few nights at the boxcar, but she’d never thought she’d get lonely.

Xaviul sleeps in the boxcar as much as he can get away with, just to keep her company. He’ll set up his sleeping bag near hers, and they’ll spend most of the night on the roof, him on his laptop and her whittling away at wood more often than not. But he can’t stay every night. Anya wouldn’t want him to, either. He’s too delicate for that sort of thing: best he packs up and heads on home with his parents, where even if he sleepwalks, they’re both sure he won’t ever get really _hurt._

And she’s got Marie around, some nights, and Astro on others. Lavi still avoids her like she’s a burr in their boots, their eyes always going wide and guilty whenever they lay eyes on her, but Anya’s sure that’ll pass. They’re skittish now, but it’s a canine sort of unease, and the first time Anya acts gentle, they’ll bounce right back.

Anya’s always got _someone_ around, and on the nights she doesn’t, she can just roam the woods, or settle her feet in the creek, sit, and think. She’s never been one to feel lonesome. Even when her grandpa had been alive, he hadn’t been around always: Anya’s grown up having to know how to live with herself and herself alone, and it’s never really bothered her, not even once.

But that’d been then, and this was now. Solitude chafes in a way she ain’t quite sure how to handle, now, because when she’s alone, she starts thinking. And Anya’s getting real tired of thinking, especially when it’s just worry after worry, her brain chewing on itself like a dog with a bone. It’s easier, when there’s folks around. She doesn’t have the time to think about her mother, or the town, or what the hell the Voices’ll do next, not when she’s having to watch faces and read lips.

She doesn’t have to think about the fact it feels like when Xaviul closes his eyes, more often than not, Laugh-Last’s waiting.

So when Cindy and Martha head into the boxcar one morning, their backpacks bulging, Anya doesn’t slip out the back of the car, the way she usually does. She sets down her pencil instead, stalks over, and says:

“D’you need any help?”

“ _Yes,”_ Martha says, and thrusts her backpack into her arms with a great heave.

Anya’s one of the biggest girls in the club. She’s shot up more over the last month, enough that her jeans are a few solid inches over her ankles, now, and it’s a hassle in a lot of ways. Last time she’d stepped into the creek, her jeans had pulled straight out of her boots, and she’d had to waste a good thirty minutes carefully burning leeches off of her skin. But there’s good points to it. The backpack ain’t near as heavy for her as it is for Martha’s slim frame, and she can fit it easily under one arm, pulling boxes out with the other.

“My hero!” Martha declares, throwing herself across the workout bench. “God, you don’t know how _heavy_ that was. I thought I was going to split a disk.”

“It’s slip a disk,” Cindy corrects, mild. She’s smaller than Anya, too, but she settled things a bit smarter than Martha did, and set the bag at her feet to unpack it.

“I said what I said.” Martha drapes her arm across her eyes, exhaling like she’s spending all the air in her lungs at once, and Anya can see a thin sheen of sweat across her skin, now. It’d be easy to let the silence rest. But..

Anya doesn’t want silence. She wants a distraction, or anything to keep her mind off of the fact Laugh-Last’s tromping through Xaviul’s dreams.

“Hot outside?” she asks, and she doesn’t know how Xaviul makes it sound so damn easy to make small talk. All she can focus on is the awkward cant of her own words, and the way her throat rasps. She hasn’t been drinking as much water as she ought to. It’s hard to remember the time when she spends all day trapped in the boxcar.

“Hot as _fuck,”_ Martha complains. “Humid, too. I think the weather said it was going to storm. Cindy, didn’t it say it was going to storm?”

“Seventy two percent chance.” The boxes they’re putting away are mostly box after box of cereal, all with the same tiger smiling from the front of it. There’s PopTarts, too, and granola bars. When Cindy sees her turning over one in her hands, she smiles, wry. “Martha’s mom used to be a Mormon,” she says. “Their entire basement’s full of stockpiles. We figured she wouldn’t notice.”

“No way she’ll notice,” Martha says. “And if she does, I’ll just tell her mice got into some, so I threw them out, and we’ll be able to bring the _rest_ here, too. She’s terrified of mice.”  
  
“Why? They’re so fluffy.”

“Fluffy with disease,” Martha says, and there’s something easy and comfortable in the way that they banter. Anya had expected they’d stay sour at each other longer, but there’s no sign of the tension that’d been building the other day.

“You two cool now?” she asks, and Cindy laughs. It’s a soft sound, but when Anya looks sidelong, Martha’s smiling now, too.

“We’re cool as cucumbers.” Martha’s sitting up, pushing back her hair. Sweat’s lathered them sticky to the front of her head, and her cheeks are pink. Anya’d figured it was from the heat. Now, she’s starting to wonder if it’s just the exertion. Some of the club kids are awful soft, when it comes down to it, and she’s never seen Martha get sent to the maze at all. “I was a little miffed,” she admits, “that Cindy’s been _stalking my dreams -”_

“I just woke up!” Cindy protests, but it’s mild. “Stop calling it _stalking._ If I started talking in my sleep..”

“I’d wake you up,” Martha sniffs, “in case someone’s about to flesh-puppet you all the way to the Maze. But that’s fine. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little friendship in the name of curiosity, I _guess._ Nah, we’re fine. If Tommy hadn’t been winding us up..”

Anya’s backpack is finally empty. She shuts her side of the old cabinet they use as a pantry, and drops the backpack by Martha’s heels.

“Tommy’s a dick,” Cindy finishes. She turns, leaning back against the cupboard, and folds her arms in front of her. It strikes Anya for the first time that she’s _older,_ for all that she hadn’t noticed at first: Martha and Cindy must be nearer to Dax’s age than hers, if not as old as Marie. “I’m sorry he keeps picking on you.”

Anya’s not sure what to do with that. Cindy looks earnest enough, and Martha’s nodding beside her, mouth twisted to the side. “I know he’s hot, so we all give him some leeway,” Martha says with a sniff, “but he’s not _that_ hot. Dax should do something about it. He’s turning into a bully _.”_

“You just have to learn not to react to it,” Cindy says, watching Anya. Her eyes are dark and earnest. “He’s doing it for a reaction. If you just don’t engage, he’ll get bored.”

It turns out she isn’t sure what to do with _any_ of this. “I ain’t fighting with him anymore,” she says, slow. “I’ve _been_ ignoring him. And he’s still biting.”

“It just takes time.” Cindy shrugs. “It sucks,” she says, “but it is what it is. I mean, it’s a little funny sometimes. But _he_ thinks it’s funny, too. And he wants your attention.”

Martha laughs. “He wants everyone’s attention. I’m glad Gwenna’s around, or he’d probably be trying to boss us all around, too. But no one wants to pick a fight with _her.”_

“I don’t know.” Cindy smiles, lopsided. “I think _Marie_ does. Haven’t you seen ‘em go at it?”

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s after a _fight,”_ Martha drawls, raising her eyebrows, and Cindy bursts into laughter, pressing her hands to her mouth.

Anya doesn’t _get it._ It’s worse than most of the clubhouse kids, she thinks, because it feels like a weight, the extent of the things she’s missing: she’s almost always on level with Xaviul, and with Marie, she’ll at least go and _explain_ things. Martha and Cindy just banter and shove like they expect she’ll just be able to get into the middle of it.

They act like this is something Anya _should_ know, and the thought’s an uncomfortable burden. Anya’s never been much for other kids. Folks had viewed her as off since she was little, and each passing year had just made her more aware of the fact she didn’t fit in. It hadn’t been a problem. She hadn’t _wanted_ to fit in, and there hadn’t seemed a point to it. Even after her grandpa’s death, she’d still had her mother, and she’d had Xaviul, and the woods.

Her ma’s lost to her, now. Xaviul’s got his own life. And the woods don’t seem near as comforting as they did, even six months ago, because.. Anya’s starting to realise she doesn’t fit in, but before now, she hadn’t ever imagined she might _want_ to.

But she doesn’t know how.

“Why was Laugh-Last in your dreams?” Anya asks instead, when the conversation comes to a lull, because she doesn’t know how to fit into their gossips and jokes, but somehow, the daimons seem so much easier.

Martha shrugs. “Because he’s the worst,” she says easily. “And he’s bored of fucking around in Xaviul’s, I guess. He had a pretty busy night, from the sounds of it. I wonder how many kids had him popping up, and just.. didn’t remember it?”

“Maybe he just wanted to talk to Dance-for-Us.” When they look at her, Cindy shrugs. “I mean,” she says, “she’s always in _your_ dreams. Where else is he going to look for her..?”

“Why was _Dance-for-Us_ in your dreams?” Anya asks again, and Martha rolls her eyes.

“Because she thinks my music is cool, and she can nag me into making something people can _dance to._ Like that’s the point of music. Super lame.”

“And because she’s sacrificed a _lot_ to her,” Cindy adds, wry. “But, yeah, it’s probably just she wants you to change your music..”

Sacrifice.

It's a word that Anya's heard bandied around on occasion, but she's never pried deep into. She knows the gist of it. Her grandpa used to go to church, and after, he'd read to her from his book sometimes, when she was real little. And she'd learned more about it all in school: Joan of Arc, the Buddha, all the folks that'd lost it all in the name of their faith.

She's never liked the idea of it much. But she’d never figured the kids here would be the 

"What're you sacrificing?" she asks, slow.

"Time," Martha says, like it's some kind of joke, and although her lip quirks up, her voice's serious. "That's what they want, y'know? The right to just climb up in your gizzard and look through your eyes. Or talk through your mouth, apparently.”

“Or to save the world, if you’re listening to Tommy,” Cindy says, wry. “I think they just.. want us to sacrifice, because we’re like their televisions. It’s more fun for them that way.”

"I’d be a pretty great television.” Martha laughs, finally sitting up from the bench, and shakes her head. The curls are still plastered to her forehead, but she rakes her hand through them, pulls them back with the rest into a loose ponytail. “I wish we could nick somebody’s air conditioning. It’d be _great.._ but whatever. Speaking of sac! I have to go give something to Dance-for-Us, before I get _heatstroke.”_

“Want to come, Anya?" Martha asks, and..

Anya's ma used to say that her curiosity would be the end of her. Anya had never really agreed. Sure, she was nosy, but she had sense. She'd never climbed into any hole that she'd thought was too deep to get out of. She'd never gotten herself into something that she hadn't known how to get out of.

She doesn't see a way out of the Voices. They're here, whether she wants 'em or not. And maybe that's why she looks at Martha, bies her lip, and says:

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

"So, like, daimons! The Voices. Whatever you want to call 'em," Martha says, leading the way. "It's straight forward. All you do is that you find something that seems holy."

"What, like water?" Anya asks, wrinkling her nose.

"Nah. Like this." Martha reaches into her pocket, and Anya doesn't know what she's expecting, but - it's not that. It's just a silver, smooth-cased lighter, with a roller along the back, as shiny as if it'd been freshly polished. "Look at this," Martha says, flicking it open, and she presses her thumb on the wheel, holding it in place.

The fire catches. It swoops in the air, so much brighter than it should be, but when she opens her mouth to ask, Martha shakes her head. So they wait, the three of them, for what feels like an eternity, as the flame shimmers in front of them.

Finally, Martha turns it off. "It doesn't die," she says, hushed, smug. "It just stays lit forever. I held it for forty minutes, last week, and it never runs out. And there's other shit like this. Tommy found a rock that seeped red if you squeeze it, two months back. And Jeremy found an egg.”

“What sort of an egg?” Anya asks, but Martha shrugs.

“I don’t know! It had spots, though. That’s pretty weird, right?”

The clubhouse isn’t really a clubhouse, never mind what they call it. Anya’s fond of the hunting shades located throughout the woods. They’re like little houses, in more ways than one, and if they don’t have water or electricity connected to them, that’s just fine: they look the part, and they serve it, if not very well. But the clubhouse..

It’s just a series of boxcars that they’d found in the woods. Gwenna said that they must’ve been left from the old mining days, and fallen off the track at some point or another, but Anya’s always wondered about that. The rail is a good mile or so off, and it’s awful far for carts to roll, through the trees and brush. But for whatever reason, the club had found three of ‘em, all nestled together in the belly of the woods.

The one in the center, they use as their headquarters. The one to the right is the one they all sleep in, and although it’s not very large, spacing’s never been much of an issue. There aren’t that many kids who want to sleep in the woods, cult or no, and the risk of sleepwalking ain’t so high that most kids aren’t willing to risk it. Only a portion of the town wanders the streets at night, following Speak-as-One’s whims: chances are, as Xaviul’d told her, it’d never be _him_ again.

Anya’s never really noticed the door to the left. It’s like her eyes had just slid off of it, the handful of times she’d paid it mind, but it strikes her as strange, now, that she’d never wandered in. Because she can see the frame just fine, following behind Martha and Cindy, and when she steps inside..

There's a table set up for prayer and worship in one of the boxcars. That boxcar, Anya figures, got picked because it was about as far away from the sleeping bags as the lot of 'em could muster. Anya’s got the question of why at the tip of her tongue, but it's the sort of question that doesn't need an answer. She knows the truth of it: no one, not even the devout, wants to sleep in the same room that the daimons lurk. Because as soon as she walks into the boxcar, it feels like the skin on the back of her nape is pricking, and there's a pressure in her head, like the buzz in the air right before the thunder claps.

It's just a boxcar, when it all comes down to it. It's not any different from the rest, she thinks, in the ways that matter: the walls are metal, and the floor is wood, and the only real difference is that it hasn't got a thing in it, save for the mirror and the table at the end of the hall.

It just feels like it’s got so much _more_ to it. 

There's a bowl on the table, and candles beside it.

And there's a person in front of it. Small, thick-framed, and -

"Oh, hello," Martha says, surprised, and Lavi jolts to their feet in a flurry of curls.

When they spin on their heels, hands clasped to their mouth, they look as guilty as if they’d just been caught out. And when Anya peers over their head and past them, she can see bird feathers in the bowl, and something small and crisp, burning steadily, and incense.

And then the smell hits her, all at once, and she presses a hand to her nose. Beside her, Martha and Cindy are doing the same. “What the fuck are you _doing?”_ Martha demands, pinched, and she’s already striding up as she speaks.

Lavi scatters like a bird, their eyes impossibly wide. “I -”

“Are these _Peeps?”_ She bends down, snatching something from the ground, and - it’s a water bottle, with a lid she twists free with a near snarl, and dumps all over the bowl. The flame dies. The smoke sputters, but then she’s waving her hand in the plume of it, still scowling. “What the hell, Lavi?”

The sound that Lavi makes isn’t quite words. Their face is turning redder and redder with each passing moment, like given enough time, they’ll go and explode. “I -”

“You don’t burn _peeps!”_

“I just wanted to see what it was like!” they cry, wrapping their arms around their shoulders. “Don’t be mean to me! I just - I didn't think it smelled _that_ bad - and Xavi said -”

“Xavi?” Anya asks, incredulous, and Lavi’s lip trembles.

“I just wanted to _know,”_ they say, with a great, hiccupy inhale. “I just wanted to see how it worked..”

“You could’ve asked,” Anya points out. She can’t tell if Lavi’s faking or not, but she’s leaning towards fake: it just doesn’t make _sense_ that they’d go weeping over something as small as this. But then again..

They’re still watching her with those big old cow eyes, so bright that there could already be tears forming. Lavi’s scarcely any younger than _her,_ but they don’t look it. And they don’t _act_ it, either. Almost all of the clubs’ kids are from Redacre, and most of ‘em are as soft and coddled as any housecat, but maybe Lavi’s just the most coddled of them all.

Anya’d been thinking she’d need to be more gentle with them. Marie had said as much! But standing here, looking at them, it strikes Anya that maybe folks being gentle’s always been the whole damn _problem._ “D’you reckon they even want that?” she continues, stepping over to the bowl. The Peeps are half-disintegrated between the fire and the flood, but she can’t imagine they looked much better before Lavi even put them into the bowl. “Nobody wants _that.”_

“I asked!” Lavi says, and for a moment, Anya thinks they’re getting _sharp_ with her. But when she looks at them, they’re still rheumy-eyed and quaking, with that waver so heavy that their shoulders are curved under it. “I asked,” they say again, and there’s no sharpness to it, just a wet sort of petulance. “And no one would tell me. They said I’m too young -”

“Ain’t anybody ever said _I’m_ too old,” Anya points out, and Lavi -

They _had_ been getting sharp, before, because for a moment, they look ready to actually throw a punch. For a moment, the mask falls, and Lavi’s face twists - then it passes, as they scrub their red face hard with an arm, sniffling loud enough that it might as well be in her ear. “It’s not fair,” they say, or Anya thinks they say: it’s hard to tell, when they’ve gone and covered their _mouth._ “It’s not fair at all! You _are_ my age, basically, and - and everyone tells _you_ stuff - because you _look_ old! You look older, and bigger, and _tougher,_ and - and of _course_ people tell you things -

“- and they just think of me as a _baby!”_ Lavi cries out. “We’re the same _age!_ Practically!”

“Then quit actin’ like a baby,” Anya says, and Lavi bursts into tears.

It feels like icewater down her back. Anya feels her face blanching, even as she takes a step back - and Cindy steps forward, mouth twisted, as she places an arm around Lavi’s shoulders. She murmurs something, too low and gentle for Anya to read, and Martha..

Martha turns to look at Anya with a wry smile. “Well, good job. But we don’t need a second Tommy,” she says, conversational, and Anya’s face heats up, just like that. “So cool your jets. Lavi! Lavi, baby, you want to watch us?” Lavi sniffs, plainative, but Cindy’s already steering them back towards the mirror, and Anya, reluctantly, falls in step. Martha’s still in front of it. She’s dumped the bowl somewhere. This close, Anya can see hairline cracks curling across the paint, just deep enough that the light won’t catch on them. “Here, take a seat, and I’ll show you _and_ Anya how it’s done.”

“Okay,” Lavi murmurs.

Martha kneels in front of the mirror, pulling the lighter free from her pocket. The first flick of the wheel, it doesn’t catch. But the second time, the flame bursts into life, so much brighter in the darkness than it looked in the open. “So! Step one,” Martha says. She’s facing away from the lot of them, so Anya can only see her face in the mirror, where the shadows are dark enough to hide her eyes. “You decide who you’ll pray to. And the way Tommy showed me is, you grab a card..”

She’s reaching under the table. Anya hadn’t even _seen_ anything under the table, but there’s a card in her hand, now. It looks black at first, but when she moves it nearer to the lighter, Anya can see the light catching on blues and golds, and the heavy grain of the cardstock underneath it. “He keeps them stocked up,” she says, turning it over, and -

The front of it’s a symbol. Anya doesn’t know where she’s seen it before, but it looks so familiar that her breath catches at the sight of it. It’s all straight lines and triangles. It could be a cup, with a thousand lines stretching from it, but..

That’s not right, she thinks. That’s not right at _all._

Across from her, Lavi’s face is pale.

“This is the card for Dance-for-Us,” Martha murmurs, and Anya shouldn’t be able to hear her, except it feels like everyone’s holding their breath. “The Dancer. The Acrobat. She told me that she used to have other names, but.. we don’t use those. So we take her card, and we say:”

“Dance For Us,” Martha says, loud enough that Anya takes a step back. The words catch in the emptiness of the boxcar, and echo back. “Dance For Us. _Dance For Us.”_ The echoes don’t sound like Martha. They’re warping and distorting as they catch on each other, until the entire room’s filled with it - until it feels like it could be a thousand voices, saying it.

Martha’s holding the card in one hand, and the lighter in the other. She holds them above the bowl, and Anya watches as the fire catches hold of the cardstock. There’s smoke curling off of it, but so much less than she expected, and the fire is so much slower. It’s eating its way across the paint, curling into the lines that surround the shape, like a river winding its way across a plain.

Or rays of sunlight, cutting across the sky.

“I request your attention,” she says. “If you’re going to use my head as your party house, can we invite someone less lame than Laugh-Last? At least invite Thee-I-Dare, and let it turn into a _fi -”_

Lavi shrieks.

Martha jolts, dropping the card - and then, when she flails out her hand towards it, she catches her finger on the lighter. “ _Goddamnit,”_ she yelps, letting go of the lighter and jerking back, hard enough that she lands flat on her ass. The lighter hits the ground with a bump, and then something _clicks._

The fire goes out.

There’s still rays of sunlight coming in from the uneven tiles of the roof. It’s not completely dark, anymore than it was when they first walked in, but it feels like all of the pressure’s going out of the room, all at once. Anya’s breath comes out in one long, gasp of an exhale, and when she lifts her hands to scrub at her face, she’s surprised to find they’re shaking.

It was just a card. She doesn’t know why she’s scared. But the shape’s stuck in her vision, like a promise of something she’ll remember. 

“You can’t _say_ that,” Lavi’s crying, and this time, Anya thinks, they’re not faking: there’s genuine panic in the waver of their voice, and it’s too loud, compared to before, too _demanding._ There’s iron under all of it, like it’s not a request, but an order. “You can’t just say that! You can’t invite _him_ into your head!”

“It’s a joke, Lavi -”

“It’s _not,_ not when you’re _lighting a candle_ and - and - inviting the _Dancer_ into your head!”

Martha looks at Anya, either for help or sympathy. Anya can’t quite muster up either, and so she looks at Cindy, instead, who looks just as confused. “Why are you worried about _that?”_ Martha says slowly. “Dance-for-Us is fine. She’s nice. I mean -”

Cindy bites her lip. “She’s kind of a party girl,” she says, rubbing Lavi’s shoulder, “but it’s fine. Don’t worry. She’s not going to make Martha do anything she wouldn’t do, anyway.”

“Is that an insult?” Martha demands, and Cindy just smiles, for all that her brows are still knit. “ _Hmph._ But she’s right, Lavi. Don’t worry about it, okay? Dance-for-Us - some of the daimons are kind of freaky, I know. Like, nobody's sacrificing to Die-for-You. That’d be..”

“Suicidal,” Cindy says, and Martha nods.

“Right. Dance-for-Us isn’t _like_ that. All she wants to do is party, and to have fun, and make people happy.” Martha bends down, plucking up her lighter. It’s still shining, but the flame’s out, and her shoulders are stiff as she rolls her thumb down the wheel. For a moment, it looks like nothing’ll come out.

But there’s the flame again - smaller, but still quick to light. “Oh, thank god,” Martha laughs, and then she smiles at Lavi. “No harm, no foul. Is this the first time you’ve thought about sacrifice, Lavi? Because maybe - I bet I just made it scary. We can get Tommy to explain..”

“I don’t want _Tommy_ to _explain,”_ Lavi says, brittle. “Tommy can’t even tell when it’s _him,_ or when it’s - when it’s - _Thee-I-Dare.”_

Anya’s never heard the name spoken like an insult before. In a way, she thinks, it almost suits him.

“Tommy’s a liar and a jackass,” Martha soothes them, rubbing the side of her face. She’s extinguished the lighter and placed it in her pocket, but she doesn’t bother pulling her hand out after. “He’s being dramatic to freak you out, that’s all. It’s not _like_ that. I’ve known him since we were at Old Growth together. If he was acting strange, don’t you think I’d notice?”

“Not if you had _him_ in your head, too.” There’s that iron in Lavi’s voice again, but their face’s soft and their eyes are wet as they peer up at Martha. Anya’s the only one that hears it, she thinks, and she doesn’t know how they don’t. “If he was in your head,” they say, wet, _sharp,_ “then he could make you not notice at all. Because you’d - you’d - you’d just be _changing,_ along with him, and neither of you would notice what’s happening at _all.”_

“Well, he’s not in my head,” Martha says, but Lavi’s already rearing back up, like a snake ready to strike.

“How would you _know!”_ they demand, their cheeks flushed. “You wouldn’t! That’s how they _get you!_ If they - Dance-for-Us is already making you go and _talk in your sleep_ \- and inviting people into your _head_ to do it! What else is she going to do? Who else is she going to _invite,_ Martha?”

“Isn’t it bad enough she’s dragging people in, without you just - just - laying out the doormat?!”

“Lavi,” Martha says, slowly. “Lavi - shit - um - Cindy -” She looks up at her for help, but whatever she sees, she doesn’t like. Martha takes a deep breath. Then she turns towards Anya.

“Anya, c’mon,” she pleads. “Help me out here. Explain to Lavi -”

Anya is already slipping out the door.


	5. In Which They Encounter a Grave Descent

Time in October passes quick.

One night turns into two into five, faster than Anya can even blink. The club doesn’t patrol every night, because the cult doesn’t act out every night. Sometimes, it’s barely past seven, and some club member will send out an alert, talking about people in white strolling the streets, and their parents having headed off to bed  _ early. _ And other times, the club has waited and waited and  _ waited, _ plans at the ready, for the supernatural hush that never quite falls.

And when she doesn’t have patrols to keep the days straight, everything just about blurs together. Anya’s schedule doesn’t change much, no matter what time of the day or night she wakes up: she climbs out of her sleeping bag, and if Xaviul ain’t around, she grabs one of her dogwood sticks to chew. If he is, she wastes a good five, ten minutes, flossing and brushing at her teeth alongside whatever kids woke with her, but privately, Anya doesn’t see the point of it.

There’s just no point to an argument, either.

After that, she goes off into the woods, more times than not. She’ll go to her hunting hide, or she’ll practice setting up traps, or she’ll fish, or just go  _ exploring. _ Anya knows the woods of Redacre like the back of her hand, but it’s not like the town: it’s always changing, in one little way or another. A tree falls. New ones grow. There’s tracks to be found, and nests to peer into, and new cracks and crevices and  _ holes  _ to make note of. It’s enough to take up hours of her time, when nobody else is around to distract her.

But night after night, more and more, Anya’s finding she prefers folks around to distract her, and she ain’t quite sure how to feel about it. There’s an uncertain kind of pleasure, though, to find that folks are coming to like  _ her _ being around, too, and more often than not, when she goes to slink off towards the woods..

“Anya!” Martha shouts from the boxcar. “I didn’t know you were up! Get  _ over here!” _

.. someone’s there to call her back.

Often, it’s Martha and Cindy, neither of whom sleeps at the boxcar regularly, but both of whom spend most of their free time at it. “Our parents work night shift,” Cindy had explained when Anya had finally mustered up the courage to ask  _ why. _ “They’re security guards up at the labs. They used to get the same babysitter for us, when we were kids, so.. like, they don’t care what we’re up to. They’re just glad we’re not on  _ drugs.” _

“Lavi heard their mum talking last night,” Martha informs her now, as soon as Anya slips through the doorway. It’s almost sundown already. There’s a cricket somewhere in the boxcar, the slip-and-slide whine of its song echoing against the metal, and there’s other kids lounging around in the corners and on their seats, their voices a low enough murmur that it doesn’t bother her any. Martha and Cindy have gone and claimed the workout bench, and Cindy slides down, patting the seat next to her.

Anya takes it gingerly. “Oh?” The boxcar ain’t large, but it ain’t exactly small, either: when she stretches out her legs to the full length, there’s still room enough for folks to squeeze on by, or slip out the door. “What, about  _ groceries?”  _ she asks, wry.

Cindy titters, and warm satisfaction curls around Anya’s core. The idea that folks might go and laugh  _ with _ her is new, but she’s finding she likes it.

“Nah. About  _ CHORUS.  _ And, you know, _ ” _ Martha says, and then twists her hand in the gesture that means  _ Speak-as-One.  _ “They figured out the club’s - a  _ thing, _ beyond just Bells. Lavi said that her mum thought it was just a few kids, but the Eze’s took Sydney’s phone.”

“I dunno that name,” Anya says, and it’s half a question, because the satisfaction’s waning, just as quick as it came. It feels like something cold is brushing against the back of her neck, cold enough to bring goosebumps, but she knows it’s in her head. October or no, it’s still seventy degrees out.

“You wouldn’t. She’s seventeen. One of Marie’s friends.” Cindy shrugs, her mouth twisting to the side. “But I guess -”

“You’ll be  _ meeting _ her. And a bunch of other kids, too, probably.” Martha shakes her head. “Dax told us that we have to keep club shit off of our phone,” she complains. “But  _ Sydney  _ was  _ texting _ about it. With Klaus, with Favour, with Shirley, Gretchen, Azeez.. they can’t stay  _ home. _ Who knows what Chorus would do to ‘em?”

“Probably kill them,” Cindy says, slouching back against the metal wall.

The inhale of Martha’s breath is so sharp, they both turn to look at her. Some people blush prettily, Anya thinks: Xaviul’s face turns  _ pink, _ as delicate as any sunrise, but Martha just blotches red, starting at her nose and ending at her ears. “Getting a little  _ dark,  _ there, Cindy,” she says, strained. “I don’t think they’d go that far! We’re still their  _ kids.” _

Cindy shrugs. She’s so much calmer than Martha in every way, but right now.. “Maybe,” Cindy says, but there’s doubt in her tone, and in the way she looks away. “But we’re still their kids when they let -” She makes the gesture for Speak-as-One: “- take our bodies sleepwalking, too. So maybe they’ll just do  _ that _ . But is it any better?”

Martha opens her mouth.

“I don’t reckon it is,” Anya says, soft, because it feels like she’s stepping on thin ice. Talking about the daimons never goes well in the boxcar, not really. Everyone’s of too many minds on the subject, and she’s not too keen on the idea of butting heads with these two. But it’d be rude, not to answer at all. “I don’t reckon there’s much of a difference at all.”

“Of course it’s  _ better.” _ Martha’s face is all blotchy now, as uneven as a crabapple in June, and the ice feels like it’s starting to crack. “You’re not fucking  _ dead,  _ you edgelords. And, like, I don’t know about  _ you? _ But I like  _ staying _ alive, sleepwalking brainwashing shit or no.” She drags a hand through her hair. “They’re not going to kill us,” she says, firmer. “Or else we’d  _ know _ Bells was dead, right? There’s no point to keeping her body when they could just..”

“.. use it to scare us,” Cindy says, finishing the sentence. “I guess you’re right.” She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just.. tired.”   
  


Anya’s growing to like some of the boxcar kids, but more importantly, she thinks, she’s startin’ to get how they  _ work.  _ Because she’s never been a fan of lies, and Cindy’s just not very good at ‘em. But when she folds, Martha lets the topic drop.

Same sort of thing, Anya thinks, Xaviul was trying to tell her to learn how to do.

  
  


That night, by eight pm, the boxcar’s filled with the children of Redacre. Everyone who’s found space’s sitting: the rest of ‘em stand shoulder to shoulder, and Gwenna stands on the bench in front of them all, a clipboard in her hand, her braids tied up into a loose topknot that bobs as she looks up.

For the most part, kids receive their missions over the phones that Dax’s dug up and hacked. Anya ain’t sure how it works, exactly, because she’s never been given one: there’s few enough that the bosses only give them out at the start of each mission, and they’re supposed to be brought back right after. But Anya’s seen Xaviul typing away on them before, and she’s read off the text messages with their missions, the few time he’s been too busy to bother.

Tonight, though..

“Aright. I expect y’all have all heard about Sydney by now,” Gwenna says. She never speaks loud, but it’s deep in just the right enough way that it carries when she talks, and catches even on Anya’s stubborn ears. When Dax presents, people gossip and chatter, filling the air with enough noise that it’s hard to hear  _ him, _ sometimes. When Gwenna presents, people listen.

Gwenna, and Tommy, and Marie. Sometimes Anya wonders what that’s like, but she doesn’t think she’d like being up there, with so many hungry eyes waiting for her words to drop.

“We all make mistakes. That’s fine! But what’s important is making sure we don’t make the same mistake _twice._ We give you these phones -” Gwenna holds up one of them, and the light refracts off of the black glass, turning it near gold in the night. “- because they’re _secure,_ okay? They only connect to each other, and if anyone else tried to look at the message history, all they’d see is emojis. It doesn’t _matter_ if we lose one of these.

“If you text on your main phone,” she says, “then it  _ does _ matter. You’re not just drawing down attention on yourself. Every kid that you’ve ever sent a cat meme to?  _ They’re  _ going to get the hammer dropped on them, too. CHORUS wants us to stop investigating. They want us to stop looking, and to just go back to bed, and be good little  _ sheep. _ And they’re using our families to make that happen.

“Because, unfortunately, this is the fact of the matter: your parents are members of CHORUS  _ first,  _ and they’re your parents  _ second. _ ”

Beside Anya, Astro gently nudges her.  **‘LOOK AT MARIE,’** they sign, and when she looks sidelong, Marie’s rapt, her eyes as bright as any firelight.

She’d never thought of it, before Cindy and Martha’d mentioned it, but..

“She’s all  _ moon-eyed,” _ she murmurs back to Astro, and they bob their head, their grin wry.

Marie’s still looking as struck by the time that Gwenna finishes her lecture, but she’s trying to blink it away, one second at a time. “She’s such an  _ ass, ” _ Marie complains with a sniff. “She thinks she’s God’s gift to the world, yeah?”

Astro nods.

  
“Just because she’s a little  _ clever!” _ Marie rolls her eyes, glancing back at Gwenna. Anya hadn’t noticed before this how often she just  _ looks _ over at her, but it’s funny in a way. 

“She’s pretty smart,” Anya offers up, and she’s not quite sure if that’s the  _ right _ answer, because Marie just rolls her eyes.

“Uh, pretty smart is a  _ term _ for it,  _ chica, _ ” she sniffs, and when Anya looks at Astro for help, they’re grinning again.

Anya’s coming to like being around the other kids, for all that she’d chafed over it at first: having friends, she thinks, is a little like stepping into the river. It’s cold, until you get used to it, and then it’s just a matter of keeping your head above the water to have fun. Sometimes, things like this make her feel she’s getting tossed around by a current she doesn’t understand.. but it’s still fun, even if it’s a little overwhelming.

She’s not  _ drowning _ in it, the way she was at the start. Anya likes to think that maybe she’s actually learning how to swim.

“C’mere,” she says, tugging at Marie’s arm. “Let’s go get our mission.”

Since Sydney’s phone was stolen, Dax had declared that - for tonight, and until they got the phone back - they’d be getting their missions in  _ person. _ There’s a lazy line circling around the boxcar, full of kids jostling and accusing each other of cutting. Anya slides into the back of it, Astro hot on her heels, but when she turns, Marie’s not following.

She’s bypassing the line entirely, and heading straight over to where Dax and Gwenna are standing.

“Should we follow?” Anya asks Astro, and they shrug.

**‘No,’** they sign after a moment.  **‘She’s probably just talking.’** Anya’s grasp of sign is still weak, but Astro moves slowly and precisely, mouthing the words to match. It’s the sort of consideration that’d make her prickle, if it was coming from someone else, because it’d be a sign they thought she was  _ stupid. _

She knows that Astro doesn’t. They’re just being  _ kind,  _ the same way that Xaviul wants her to be.

“Thanks,” she says, a little awkward, and then signs the word back to match.

When Marie returns a few minutes later, she looks like a cat that’s eaten a canary. “Alright, kiddos,” she says, warm and pleased, and jerks her chin hard to the side. “We’ve got our mission! We’re heading down to the Maze -”

**‘Did you get Gwenna’s number, too?’** Astro teases, and Marie flips up her middle finger.

“Like I didn’t already  _ have  _ it!”

The girl in front of them in line turns around. “Did you  _ cut?” _

“Go cry to Dax about it,” Marie informs her, pleased as punch, and fairly bounces off, leaving Astro and Anya to follow. But by the time they get through the crowd and back to the boxcar, Marie’s already kneeling on the floor of it, her head buried under the coats in the standing box they use as a wardrobe.

**‘We’re stocking up on supplies** ** _,’_** Astro signs. **‘We’re supposed to check the Maze for the phone.’**

Anya doesn’t like thinking of the last time she was underground. She can still feel Lavi’s bird-thin wrists in her hand, and the way the bones had shifted. “I don’t see why we need to go down there,” Anya says slowly. “It’s not - the phone’d be  _ up-ground, _ wouldn’t it?”

The coats above Marie rustle. She rocks back onto her heels, then pops onto her feet in one smooth motion. There’s a flashlight in her hand, and something long and metal, with rust spackling the nooks and crannies. It’s got a  _ hook _ at the top, almost, and a thick coiled rope that makes Anya’s hands ache to look at it. They’ve healed over well enough by now, but she’s still got the pale white sheen of where the skin had ripped open.

She just doesn’t like grappling hooks, she decides. They’re  _ awful.  _ “D’you reckon we have to use that?” Anya asks, shoving her hands in her pocket.

“Nah, nah, shit, we can leave it at home, if you’d like.” Marie drops it on the ground, where it hits with a dull thud. She grabs one of the backpacks off of a hook and starts packing things in: the flashlight and the grappling hook go in first, squashed each to one side, then a handful of bandages from the nearest shelf, and then granola bars..

Astro holds out three water bottles. She grins up at them and shoves the bottles into her bag. “We’ll leave it at home, and we’ll just start climbing with our  _ hands.  _ Like squirrels,” she teases, giving the backpack an experimental lift. Her eyebrows go up. “Hey, Astro, you wanna carry this?”

**‘Can I add some of the firecrackers?’** they sign, curious, and Marie laughs.

“Sure, why not! We’ll start up a rave downstairs, add some  _ colour _ to it. And - did I answer you, chica?” Anya shakes her head. “Well, we’re going under,” Marie says, crisp and cheerful. “Gwenna wants us to go get the phone, and it’s not gonna be in someone’s  _ house. _ They don’t want anybody finding evidence they’re up to shit, and what’ll they say if someone  _ normal _ finds it? Nah. No good way to explain that. But -”

Marie grabs a jacket and slides it on, and then gestures for Anya to do the same. “If you want to stay home,  _ chica, _ ” she says, a little more serious, “don’t worry! You don’t have to come, aright? Dax would’ve had me and Tommy do it, but -”

She shrugs. “He’s been staying busy this week,” Marie says, rolling her eyes. “His mum says he’s got the flu, but I’m pretty sure the flu’s not called ‘DOOM 3’. _ ” _

Anya  _ could _ just not go. The offer hangs in the air, not quite tempting, but almost. She’s got no fondness for the mines, or the caves, or anything about any of this. If it was a mission above ground, she wouldn’t have hesitated, but nothing good has ever happened under the earth.

But Marie’s picking her over  _ Tommy _ . Anya’d never thought of herself as petty, but she wonders now if it was just that she hadn’t ever had the chance.

“Well, I don’t have to worry about grades,” she says, her tone so much more mild than she feels. “And ain’t like you can get into the Maze easy without me.”

Dax, Tommy and Marie have written down over a dozen ways into the maze, between the woods and the town. There’s just enough that nobody has to use the same entrance two times in a row, a strategy that Gwenna always says will keep CHORUS off-balance.

A lot of the kids prefer the entrances through the town. But Anya's fond of the woods. There's half a dozen places to get in, and they're never used often. Too many of the kids are afraid of stickers, or getting lost, and in a way, she can't blame 'em.

There's worse things in the dark than the Lucids, and the woods are full of secrets. But she's got an entrance in mind tonight. Marie's picking her over Tommy, from circumstance, but also  _ choice, _ and Anya knows there's one entry to the Maze that he avoids like the devil himself is waiting in it.

The way that Anya’d heard it, Tommy had woken up in the woods one night, long before she’d ever joined the club. He’d woken up with dirt under his nails and iron in his mouth, and he’d had to dig his way out of his own grave, clutching at every gasp of air he could suck in. Listening to him tell it, Tommy had only just managed to get out, and he’d practically  _ died  _ to the Lucids on his trail, before finally,  _ just finally, _ he’d made it home before his parents could wake.

Anya doesn’t figure it was half that dramatic. But it’s one of the few things with him that she can manage anything close to sympathy over, because when they step out of the woods - Marie swearing over  _ branches in her face, chicanos, remember she’s  _ down _ here! -  _ she can’t imagine waking up here alone, in the dead of night, not knowing how she’d ended up here, or why.

Even wide awake, having walked the path herself, the sight of the graveyard makes her stomach twist.

Once, Redacre hadn’t been a town so much as it’d been a dozen or more families, all scattered like seed around the lake that sustained them. Her grandfather’s kin had been one of many, back in those days, but the families hadn’t been quite a  _ community  _ with one another. They’d all kept their dead to themselves, burying them in the hills and crags that made up so much of the mountains. Anya’s grandfather used to say it wasn’t until the mine arrived that they got their first central graveyard, filled with  _ everyone’s  _ folks, all stacked among each other.

He used to say, too, that the mine had made certain they’d gotten their second graveyard, too, and their third after that.

Anya can believe it. The ground slopes up here. There’s wooden steps laid down in a rickety sort of stairs, and they’re louder than she remembers, squeaking and shifting as she takes a hesitant step up. But they hold. She doesn’t slip as she leads her group - her  _ friends  _ \- up what has to be a clear ten feet of steps, the trees clearing more and more around ‘em with every foot they climb.

When they breach the top, there’s nothing to block out the sky. This far from Redacre, it’s full of stars, and a crisp, cold moonlight that bathes the graveyard bare. Hoadley’s church sits on the cliff above them, far enough away that it casts a shadow clear across the yard, and Marie looks up at it, makes a swooping gesture that Anya doesn’t recognise, a quick swing from her forehead, to her chest, and across her shoulders.

“Girl, you ever thought about taking us somewhere  _ nice?” _ she says aloud. Marie can’t decide where she’s looking; her gaze keeps swinging from the gravestones, to the crypt, to the church high above the both of them, and there’s a tremble to her hand when she drops it. “The hell is this?”

**‘I didn’t know this was still around,’** Astro signs. Their face’s a little pale, but they’re looking around all the same, their eyes bright in the darkness.  **‘I thought they would’ve sealed up this entrance. Is that a church up there?’**

“It’s Hoadley’s old place,” Anya says. “My grandpa’s grandpa used to live up here.” Anya’s voice is hushed. It ain’t like she means it to be: it’s just hard to speak proper in graveyards like this, like too loud of a noise will stir up something that none of ‘em want to deal with. “But they had to move, when they settled the church. Said they didn’t want them living that close.”

It’d been more than that, she thinks. Her grandfather had always gone a bit strange when talking about it, brisk and distant and  _ unhappy _ in a way that Anya hadn’t liked to see. It was the sort of mood that got her bit when she’d asked questions, and so she’d learned to drag his attention off of it, instead. “That was a long time ago, though. Way back in the start of things.”

“You Americans and your..” Marie looks at her sidelong. There’s a flicker of a question in her eyes, but Anya can’t tell what she’s thinking, and it only lasts a minute. “ _ Classism,” _ Marie teases, with a wry little smirk. “What, chica, were they afraid that the country was going to rub off?”

That hesitance could be an insult, Anya thinks, but - Marie doesn’t pick like that, not on  _ her, _ and so it can’t be. But whatever it is, she doesn’t know how to respond to it. So she doesn’t: she just smiles back, a little forced, and she lets the silence sit. They’re not in the forest anymore. The night is still, and there’s no crickets, or owls, or the gentle push of the treetop’s rustling to distract from it. The only sound is their own breathing, and the silence of the graveyard, weighty enough that it feels almost physical.

Anya knows by now that if she waits long enough, someone else will break it. And Astro’s never been bothered by silence, not anymore than her, so it’s Marie that breaks first. “I wish the town still had a church,” she complains. She’s back to looking up at the gloom of Hoadley’s church, and in the moonlight, she almost looks as wistful - as  _ young  _ \- as Lavi. “I miss going to services. Even if you all do them  _ wrong _ here.”

Astro’s drifted over to one of the gravestones. They’re kneeling in front of it, carefully pulling back the moss that’s grown over the top. It clings to their fingers, and their hand shades the engravings, but they’re peering like they can read it all the same. With their free hand, they sign:

**‘Yeah. I miss temple. We’ve got a place rented, but.. it’s not the same.’**

“At least you have a  _ building. _ For a religious cult,” Marie complains, “they sure fucking hate  _ religion, _ don’t they?”

**‘They don’t want the competition,’** Astro signs, wry.  **‘Oh, this place is old. This grave says 1705. And.. oh. It’s a Cohen.’**

“Is this a  _ Jewish  _ graveyard?” Marie asks, curious. “I thought all you mountain hicks were  _ Protestants.” _

**‘The Appalachians are pretty diverse. My mom said there’s been a lot of religions up here..’**

It’s quiet enough that Anya could listen to Marie talk, if she wanted. But she only keeps half an ear on the conversation as she starts making her way through the graves. She’s only been up here twice before: once to figure out if it’d really  _ been _ a grave that Tommy had crawled out of, and once after that, just to make sure she’d remembered the spot proper.

The graveyards out in the mountains were queer things. Out in the woods, you couldn’t properly  _ dig, _ not the way that she’d seen folks working their gardens in town. Maybe some mountains were dirt, but the Blue Ridges were mostly just stone, and so there’d never been shovels. Graves were blown out of the stone through dynamite and bombs, and there’d be no digging your way past the debris they’d pile back in over the caskets.

So Anya had thought from the start that Tommy’s entrance must have been a trap door. Something near enough to the graves that Tommy could be mistaken, and far enough into the clearing that it might be more ground than rock. The first time she’d come out here, it’d taken her a good thirty minutes just to find it. She’d crawled on her hands and knees, pushing away the grass, trying to feel with her fingers what was too dark to see with her eyes.

This time, though, she doesn’t have to crawl. Anya doesn’t remember the exact spot the trapdoor’s at, but that’s just fine: she just walks and stomps her shoe as she goes, testing out the ground and feeling how it shifts with each step. Behind her, Astro and Marie are still chattering away. The conversation’s drifted towards who’s Jewish in the valley, and who ain’t, and who’s Catholic, and who ain’t.

When she stomps her foot, hard enough that her heel stings with the force of it, the ground’s solid.  _ Stone,  _ same as the graveyard proper.

Another step. It’s dirt, giving just a little under her boot.

Another step. Stone again.

And then, finally, when she steps next: the dull, satisfying  _ thunk _ of wood.

“I found it,” she calls out, and Astro and Marie hush up around her. They’d been crouching near one of the graves, discussing the name on it, but now they perk up.

Since the last time Anya came, there’s been a storm, and she can see the signs of it in the trapdoor: the wood is swollen, the red paint cracking, and there’s little green sprouts popping up from the cracks that’ve formed, tangling up around the curved hook of a handle. But the eye in the center’s clear as daylight still, winking at her through the dirt.

“Alright. Let’s head down! Good news, chica,” Marie says, dusting off her pants. “We’ve figured out absolutely jack and shit. Could be a Jewish graveyard, could be Protestant, but..”

**‘We figured out there’s no Brazilians,’** Astro says, and Marie laughs.

“Turns out we were too busy being  _ colonised _ to come up north. Who knew?”

Anya hadn’t been paying much mind to the conversation, but she casts her mind back now. They’d been talking religion. She can work with that. So she shrugs, musters up a smile. “There’s a lot of folks here. It’s been around since the start of things,” she says, the words a little awkward even to her, but that’s just fine. “Shame the Goldfinches ain’t up here. Lavi likes this kind of thing, yeah? They’d probably think it was cool.”

There’s no response. When she turns, Astro and Marie are looking at her like she’s gone a little strange.

**‘They should be here,’** Astro signs, but Marie’s speaking up, too.

‘Why wouldn’t they be up here?’ she asks, cocking her head to the side. With her nose, and her dark hair, and her dark eyes, it just makes her look like a crow, ready to peck. There’s a trick here, but Anya get  _ why. _

“Lavi said their pa’s from New York, a few nights ago,” Anya says slowly, and she might’ve said more - would’ve! - but Marie’s gaze sharpens.

Then Marie clicks her tongue at her, disapproving as her own mother, and Anya’s face flushes, for all that she doesn’t know how. “Don’t be  _ racist _ , girl. Maybe  _ generations _ back,” Marie says, disapproving. “Didn’t you grow up here, Anya?” And now it’s  _ scolding,  _ too, like Lavi hadn’t said it  _ themself.  _ But embarrassment feels like a frog in her throat, and there’s no space to protest, either, when Marie just keeps going. _ “ _ The Goldfinches are a founding family. They’ve been here since the  _ start _ of things. You ought to  _ know _ that.”

Anya’s face feels hot enough to burn. “I,” she starts to say, but what is there to say? Marie’s looking at her like she’s gone and dragged a dead beast across the floor, and the injustice of it makes Anya’s stomach curdle.  _ She wasn’t being racist, _ she wants to say, and  _ how could she have known, the Goldfinches were  _ old? Lavi hadn’t told her that.

Lavi’d just told her lies.

“Let’s head in,” she says instead, and gives the trapdoor a firm yank. It doesn’t want to come at first. So she braces her foot hard against the edge of it, grabbing it firmly, and  _ pulls. _

The wood’s swollen. But maybe embarrassment’s good for  _ something, _ because when she leans in, putting her back into it, it finally snaps up.

The hole’s dark. But it’s not quiet. There’s music drifting out of the opening, soft and strange in the way the Song always is, and so much closer than she’s ever heard it before. And it’s not a chill night, all things considered, with the blood so hot in her face, but there’s still goosebumps pricking on her skin.

The other two’s faces are pale, when Anya looks their way. “Yeah,” Marie says, taking a deep breath. The scolding tone’s gone now. “Yeah, let’s go and get it over with.”

No one’s in the mood to argue after they climb through the trapdoor.

The Maze stretches out all underneath Redacre, like the roots of some vast tree. Anya’s been in through more entries than she can count: she organises them by place and by landmark, moreso than she does by the names that the club uses, and the policy of never using the same entrance twice in a row means that she’s been all across the town’s sprawl the last two months. Anya thinks sometimes that maybe it doesn’t just exist under Redacre.

Maybe it exists under all of the mountain range, stretching like the coal that makes up its veins.

And maybe it’s because of that - the fact that the Maze is so damn  _ big _ \- that the Club’s managed to succeed so far. Redacre’s only got a thousand or so people in it, at most, and Anya doesn’t reckon even a quarter of the adults are Lucids. There aren’t enough of them to man every part of the Maze, not every night, and some of the clubmembers have been lucky enough that they ain’t ever seen so much as a  _ hair _ from the Lucid’s

Anya wishes she was that lucky. But even she’s had her good streaks. There’s been weeks where she’s gone down almost every night, nearly, and the Maze’s been quiet as a grave.

She ain’t lucky tonight. 

The song is getting louder with each step down the ladder, and deeper too: it washes over her like a wave, the sounds pitched low enough that it makes her teeth itch with the feeling of them. Part of Anya just wants to stop and go back on up, and above her, she can see the same slinking kind of hesitance in the way that Marie and Astro move, their feet hovering over the next rung in moments that seem to hang forever. But when she hesitates, Marie’s foot brushes her fingers, questing. There’s no room for her to stop, not when they’re all on the ladder.

So Anya keeps climbing down.

The ladder’s in darkness. There’s no lights in the room they’re descending into, save the spackle of the moon high above, and the temperature drops with every step. On the surface, it’d been warm for an October night, enough that Anya’d nicked the thinnest coat she could find on the wall.

She always forgets how much  _ colder _ it is underground. The ladder’s like ice in her hands, and even the thin smudge of dirt across each ledge ain’t enough to take away the bite of it.

As soon as she’s off of it, she’s wiping her hands on her pants, trying to scrub some heat back into them. They’ve climbed down into a small, circular room. This low, this deep, there ain’t any moonlight left to properly see - it’s just enough to cast shadows, deepening the crags in the walls, and making the thin doors nearly fade into the darkness. There’s two of ‘em, each facing a different way in front of them, but the style’s the same on both.

The same languid white eye from the trapdoor blinks at her from both.

Anya can’t tell which door the song is coming from. It’s catching on the walls, distorting each time it bounces, and even with the doors here, blocking the sound, it’s so much  _ louder  _ than she’s ever heard it before, loud enough that her teeth ache with the sound. “Maybe we should go back,” she murmurs, as Marie lands on the ground next to her with a gentle  _ paft _ and plume of dust.

Marie’s smile is a little strained. “Maybe we should try another entrance,” she allows, just as quiet. But Astro’s looking at the doors, thoughtful, as they settle on the ground.

And just as something strikes something else, a percussive kind of _bang_ that makes Anya take a step back, they take a step forward. **‘No. I think this is fine. The song is coming from the left door,’** they say, and jerk their chin to the right. **‘Let’s go through this one.’**

Wherever there’s music, there’s Lucids or Sleepers playing it. Going forward feels like a fool’s move, Anya wants to say. It’d be easier to go to another entrance, and to try again, and get away from the entire mess of this: find somewhere that there’s no music, and there’s no Lucids around to worry about.

But Astro’s stepping forward, and Marie falls into step behind them with only a moment of hesitance. She doesn’t look back at Anya. She just moves, like she expects that Anya’ll follow, and the thought Anya might not hasn’t even crossed her mind.

Part of Anya still smarts over how Tommy  _ left her, _ during that storm and patrol. She could’ve been taken by the Lucids, to face whatever justice they have in mind. She could’ve fallen off of the roof and hurt herself, or fallen off the cliff entirely, or just stayed up there, all night long, soaked to the bone, waiting for them to come back.

But when everyone else had left her, Marie had found her, and Marie had kept her safe.

When Anya steps forward, she can feel the hum of the song all the way in her bones.

But she follows them through the doors.

Astro was right. As soon as the door shuts behind them, the song quiets. It’s not entirely gone: Anya can still hear it on the edge of her range, just low enough that it’s impossible to tell if the strike of something on metal is from the song, or just the beat of her heart. And as they head down the hall, the walls begin to smooth around them, and tiles begin to appear along the ground.

The Maze is always changing. Anya remembers one of the stories she’d been told, back when she was new, of the chambers that Gwenna had first mapped out with Bells help. It’d been a massive, stone chamber, round as a cherry and with a round, small pit swelling in the center of it. They’d seen the Lucids singing in there, Gwenna and Bells, and they’d made plans to return the next night.

But when they did, the door was gone. The wall was soft and craggy like new concrete, Gwenna had said, too deep to dig through, and afterwards..

The song from the Instrument had deepened.

But this section of the Maze is just as Anya remembers it, and there’s no hesitation in Astro’s step as they lead the three of them further. Nothing’s changed  _ here. _ And as the song dulls behind her, she relaxes, step by step. A lot of places in the Maze were built to amplify sounds, but the walls are craggy and curved here. They’re covered in long, thick tapestries of red and white, mostly, but wherever the walls are bare, Anya can see little windows filled with thickly woven cords, half hidden under the stone. Most of them, at least: some are stretched out of their acloves, and all the way to the ceiling, which practically bristles with them.

This hall’s been made to swallow the sounds from outside, and the only thing that Anya can hear is the sound of their own footsteps on the stone, the rush of her blood in her ears, and below all of that, almost as a murmur, the gentle pulse of the strings.

Anya doesn’t mind it. The song, when she catches wind of it in the Maze, always feels like it has an  _ intention. _ Like it’s not just noise, but something trying to a carve a path right through Anya’s brain and into her soul, one vibration at a time.

The strings are better. They’re just noise, and to her, they’re almost a familiar one.

“My ma plays the guitar,” she says to Marie. There’s a ladder in the far end of the hall, one that connects to the rafters. If they climb it and follow the rafters through, they’ll end up in one of the Lucid’s storage halls, and Astro’s heading straight towards it. Anya hadn’t thought they’d know the entrance, but.. they had recognised it, when she brought them to the graveyard.

And they have been in the clubs for months and months longer than her. There probably ain’t a lot of things she knows, she thinks, that they haven’t already puzzled out, and the sourness of the thought’s surprising. “I wonder if she works with _this,”_ she adds, slow. Anya doesn’t talk about her ma much. It feels a little strange to be saying it now, but it’s that, or listening to the wires hum, or thinking about why she’s getting sour towards _Astro_. Astro’s never done a thing against her. “She’d probably think it’s neat.”

**‘Who knows? Someone has to work with it, right?’** Astro says. ‘ **This place’s pretty abandoned tonight. That’s good. I guess they’re over in the other wing.’**

**‘I almost wish they** ** _weren’t,’_** Marie complains. She always slips into sign as easily as if she was born speaking it. **‘I hate these halls,’** she says, and Anya’s lucky: she isn’t too good at sign still, but Marie’s as careful as Astro with it. She forms the words with her lips, slower than she would’ve if she’d been speaking out loud, and.. that shouldn’t make her feel sour, either, but everything feels like it’s got an _edge_ to it, like they’re interrupting something they oughtn’t be. **‘Why the fuck is it so** ** _quiet?’_**

Anya looks over at the wires. They’re still vibrating, hard enough that the edges blur in her vision, as gentle as a pulse, and they’re a lot of things. But not _quiet,_ she thinks. **‘Doesn’t seem quiet to me,’** she says, but Marie’s rolling her eyes before she’s halfway through.

**‘Course not,’** she complains.  **‘You’re deaf. You’re used to this.’**

Anya bites her tongue. Astro holds up a hand, and then turns, starts climbing the ladder steadily upwards. Marie slips in behind them, scrambling like she was born to it, and Anya carries up the tail, same as always, keeping her mind on  _ climbing, _ and not all the things she could say. It’s only when their feet are all on the grid that Astro turns.  **‘That’s not how deafness works,’** they say, wry.  **‘But it** **_is_ ** **quiet.’**

The wires are still pulsing. But neither of them are paying them any mind. Astro’s off and about, their hands going just fast enough that Anya’s having difficulty following: something about  _ cushions  _ and  _ soundwaves _ and  _ bouncing, _ a word that she catches the gist of mostly just from the bouncing.

She reaches down, her fingers hesitating just above the wires, and she can feel the air moving around them.

**‘Well, I still hate it, chico,’** Marie sniffs, once Astro’s done. **‘But silence is better than the music, I guess.’**

Anya lifts her hand.

Walking across the rafters is always a little dangerous. If you fell, then it’d be ten, twenty feet to the stone floor behind you, and it’s not  _ easy _ to see when you’re up here. But the beams are thick, thick enough that Astro can keep both feet side-by-side without touching the air. And the kids are always careful. No one’s fallen yet.

Still, the conversation stills as they make their way across it. The hallway below only had two entrances: one to a storage closet that Anya’d seen, the first time she’d come down here, and the one back to the pseudo-grave from which they’d emerged. But the club likes the rafters for more than just the fact the Lucids don’t get on them.

The ceilings of the Maze are always filled with holes. They’re big, far bigger than they need to be for the wires to fit through, as big as the holes on a flute - though Tommy had laughed at her when she’d mentioned that thought in the boxcar, once, and she’s kept the thought to herself since. In some parts of the maze, the wind catches in these, creating its own kind of whistling music.

Here, there’s no breeze. The air’s almost entirely still as Marie takes the grappling hook off of her back and passes it to Astro. Anya holds her breath as they lean back, and then carefully, meticulously toss it.

The snap of it grabbing hold is loud, but the walls swallow the sound almost as soon as it comes. Astro gives the rope an experimental tug. It doesn’t so much as budge.  **‘You head up first,’** they tell Marie,  **‘just in case. And then you, Anya.’**

Marie climbs like she was born to it. One moment, she’s on the ground with them, and in the next, she’s already halfway up, her feet braced neatly against the wall, her back curved as she half-walks, half-pulls herself along the rope.

Anya isn’t nearly as graceful. The hole’s large, but it ain’t exactly meant for people to climb up through: her shoulders touch the far end when she tries to copy Marie’s method, and the first time the rock scrapes, she gives in. Pulling herself up straight makes her palms sting anew, but better than leaving blood or cloth on the walls here. CHORUS doesn’t know that they know about this entrance. She doesn’t need to give an excuse for them to find out.

The hole’s almost too small for Astro: they have to bend down, folding in on themselves and tucking their elbows tight as they slide in slideways, like a dog escaping through a cat door. Anya’s thankful that she’s all bones, at times like these. Sure, Astro can outrun a lucid, but.. it just looks uncomfortable, that’s all, the way they’re having to climb. And she’d sign some encouragement, if she knew the words, but she doesn’t.

And something’s distracting her from that thought, anyway.

The sound’s different here. It’s less muted, for starters, but it’s not just  _ that, _ she thinks: there’s a breeze blowing through this new room, whistling through the crags in the raw stone they’re surrounded in, and that might be it. Or maybe it’s just that the room’s bigger, because they’ve climbed up the shaft, and onto a ledge that overlooks one of the Maze’s many supply hubs.

Some of the hubs were like warehouses, but most were just like this: caverns that’ve had their walls worn smooth and lined with more lockers than she can count. They’re filled with clothes, sure, and other, more random things: Dax’s found files, and once, Tommy had found one of his plaques. 

It’s empty right now. The stillness would be almost serene, if it weren’t for the wires stretching across Anya’s platform, and all the way across the ceiling. There’s something about the wires that’s bothering her. The sound’s off, somehow, sitting inside of this new room.

But it’s only when she really  _ looks _ at them, starting to slow from their constant pulse, she realises that it isn’t exactly the  _ sound _ that’s bothering her.

It’s a feeling.

Marie’s sliding down the rope, dropping so delicately onto the ground that the dirt hardly moves. She’s bare inches from the doorway of the room, but she isn’t paying it any mind: she’s already pawing through lockers, opening them and scanning over the contents with a quick trained eye before sliding it shut and popping to the next. She’s done this dozens of times before, Anya thinks, and it shows: if she left Marie alone, she might’ve finished the entire room in five minutes.

She can’t. There’s something  _ wrong, _ and her stomach’s twisting, even as the wires slow beside her.  **‘Marie,’** she signs, but Marie isn’t  _ looking _ at her. So Anya tries, her voice rasping a bit: ‘- Marie!’

The sign that Marie makes is ‘ **fine,’** she thinks, or  **‘it’s alright,’** or maybe just  **‘quiet’,** because it’s dismissive enough. 

The strings have slowed almost to a stop. Anya’s throat is in her mouth. There’s sweat on the back of her neck, pricking, but she doesn’t know why. There’s no one in the room, except her and Marie. Astro’s about to be up in just a minute or two: she can’t hear them breathing behind her, but she  _ knows _ how quickly it ought to take them. She should stay up here, to help pull them up, if they need it.

Instead, Anya takes a deep breath, and scrambles down the ledge.

Marie had used the rope, but Anya’s used to climbing. There’s crevices in the walls that serve well enough as handholds, and something sour - frustration, or  _ fear -  _ keeps her swift. Her heart’s racing, although she isn’t sure why. And with each slow creak of the wires settling, it feels like time is running out. Her feet touch the ground just as the wires stop entirely. It feels like it only takes two steps before she’s at Marie’s side.

‘Anya,’ she hisses, looking up, ‘what’re you --’

Anya grabs her, pulls the both of them into a locker, and jerks the door shut.

Marie’s thin-boned and small in her arms. She’s so much more  _ delicate _ than Anya thinks that a human should be, even with her muscles: if Anya squeezed, she feels like she might break. Or maybe she’d just break  _ Anya,  _ because her eyes look bright enough to spark flames when she tilts her head back to stare up at her. ‘ _ What,’ _ she whispers, furious, ‘are you  _ doing -’ _

When they hear the sound of a door snapping open, she shuts up.

There’s three lines cut through the steel of the locker door. Anya’s just the right height to peer through them, but she can’t see much. There’s only shadows on the walls, and the sound of movement outside. Each step feels like a drumbeat. And it’s not just one set of footsteps she’s hearing, she thinks. It’s two.

When they start speaking, she amends: it’s  _ three. _

“- need to calm down,” the first voice -  _ One -  _ says. It’s a man, Anya thinks, with a voice as smooth and deep as granite. “Don’t let this stress you out.”

_   
_ “ _ Let it!” _ The second voice laughs, brittle. Another man. Two.

But there’s three sets of footsteps. At  _ least _ three, she thinks, and when Marie looks up at her, wide-eyed and alarmed, Anya knows she can’t look much better.

‘ **The fucking rope,’** Marie mouths, and..

Anya shrugs, helpless. They can’t help it now. Astro’ll remove it, or they won’t.

“It’s not a matter of  _ letting it.  _ It’s just -  _ fuck. _ ” Two is complaining outside. There’s the rustle of something, just loud enough for Anya to catch. Marie grimaces. A moment later, the sour-sweet smell of cigarette smoke wafts to Anya, too. “When I heard about Redacre, I didn’t think it was going to be perfect. I’m not the  _ Satos, _ for fuck’s sake, I wasn’t bagging on this being a  _ utopia.  _ I just figured it’d be  _ better _ than Chicago, you know?”

“Low standards, Eze,” One says, and there’s a bark of something too sharp to be a bark.

The name’s familiar. Anya doesn’t know  _ why, _ but Marie’s gone stiff in her arms. And when she nudges her, careful, Marie looks up and mouths:

**‘Sydney’s dad.’**

“Less crime. Less  _ anger. _ I wouldn’t have to worry about my kids getting pulled into  _ gangs _ , or getting  _ hurt, _ or -” A sharp intake of breath. Two -  _ Eze’s  _ \- voice is so sour, it feels like an echo of Anya’s own emotions. But the wires have stilled. The feeling’s dissipated, and now there’s just bile in the back of her throat as she clings to Marie, and watches through the vents. “Not having to worry about if the  _ neighbors _ are starting up a  _ methhouse  _ next door,” Eze’s saying, “just because I can’t afford to live on the Magnificent Mile _.  _ But then all of this shit starts up.

"I moved here so my kids wouldn’t be in a gang, and what happens? Sydney ends up with the _ Girl Scouts _ of the  _ Heretic Americas _ , Jeb. What the fuck’s up with that? _ ” _

**‘Sydney?’** Anya mouths. She’s never met the girl, or heard the name before, but.. Cindy had said that she was one of Marie’s friends.

And Marie’s looking queasy.

“It’s not a  _ gang _ ,” Jeb -  _ One - _ replies, smooth and soft. “They’re children. That’s all. If you’re going to convince anyone, you must set aside your emotions on this.”

“Set aside my emotions? You’re sounding like your  _ wife,” _ Eze fires back. “Some of us actually like our children. Jessica and I -”

The third set of footsteps stills. “Don’t bring me into this,” a familiar voice says, and Anya presses against the back of the locker, like she might find a way to escape Xaviul’s mother.

She doesn’t. It’s solid steel walls all around her, and the only way to leave would be going through the Lucids. But Marie’s in front of her. And while Anya knows she’s bigger than some of the Lucids, and she’s certain she can run faster..

Marie’s small, and bird-boned, and delicate. She doesn’t need to be tackled by the Lucids: they could just grab her by an arm and she’d be  _ trapped. _

“Yeah, sorry for saying that you love your  _ son.  _ Fucking hell, people.”

One of the Lucids stalks past the locker, cigarette dangling from his lip. Anya has an impression of someone pale and gaunt, the red collar of their shirt stark against their skin - but then he’s out of sight, and all she has is the sound of footsteps circling around the lockers. “We’re making the world a better place,” Jeb says, firm. His voice’s farther away. The smoker must be Eze, then. “We  _ all  _ love our children. That’s the entire reason we’re  _ doing _ this: to make something that’ll last, and something that’ll improve, for them, for their grand-children, for  _ everyone _ after us.

"So we have a few foxes in the henhouse. We’ll remove them, and we’ll keep going. The Voice is correct: if we handle this calmly, and we don’t let it grow, then it will be  _ fine.” _

"I just wish we knew how many children were involved in this," Jessica says. She sounds tired. Anya wonders if she’s still limping - and then she has to bite her tongue, hard enough to sting, to keep a hysterical laugh from bubbling past her lips. "They're just children. But if it's only a few.. that's so much more  _ manageable _ ."

"My daughter wouldn't be involved, if it was just a  _ few. _ " Eze inhales, slow and heavy enough that Anya can hear it even inside the locker. "It has to be the whole town. If we just rounded up all of the children," he says, and Marie tenses against her: "- then we could cut this all off at the quick. If the Voice would just  _ listen _ to us -"

"Watch your words," Jessica warns him, soft, just as Jeb asks:

"Should we punish the group for the actions of the individual?" His voice is so mild, it makes the hair at the back of Anya's neck prick. The wires aren’t making noise anymore. The only thing she can hear here is the rat-tatta-tat of her own, frantic heart, and the Lucids outside the door. "What have the rest of our children done to deserve that trauma? If we make them feel like we’re  _ punishing _ them, unfairly, they’ll lash out. They’re children, not  _ dogs. _ ”

"They're  _ all  _ involved with this." Eze’s voice rises, but then there's the sound of footsteps. There's a rustle of fabric, thick and heavy enough that it makes Anya think of curtains, and then words, too muffled for her to hear.

Not for Marie, though. Her eyes go wide as her face pales, and she presses harder against Anya, the bony edge of her chin jutting into her shoulder.

"Look at their heart monitors. You're unsettling the Sleepers, Eze," Jeb says, in that same mild tone. "If you keep it up, we’ll have company. And this is  _ not  _ a conversation we wish to spread.”

Sleepers.

Anya hadn't considered who they might've brought into the locker-room with them. But of course they'd have brought sleepers: the Lucids are so rarely on their own. She still isn't sure what, exactly, their role is in the cult, but..

It's better to be caught by a Lucid than a Sleeper. The Lucids are awake. For all that the club members can't see their faces, the Lucids are always aware of what they're doing. They hesitate, when they encounter the kids. They know that they're dealing with children, and that's all that most of the club members have needed to get away.

The Sleepers never hesitate. Trapped in their dreams, they only ever listen to the Song, and they don't care who they're told to attack, whether it's a child or an adult. They don't try to be gentle, either. Marie's spoken about her earliest patrol before, when she'd fallen behind Tommy, and a Sleeper had wrapped his hands all around her throat before a Lucid had intervened.

Marie's face is nearly white. Anya thinks she's remembering that, too.

"I'm just saying." Eze sighs, frustrated, and there’s that snap-snap- _ click _ of a lighter again. “We have to figure this  _ out. _ I understand the Voice’s hesitance to intervene. No one  _ wants _ to punish the children, and no matter what, that’s how they’re going to see it. They’re not old enough to understand what we’re  _ doing. _ They’ve been told  _ lies. _

"But what else can we do?”

“We raised them to be too trusting,” Jessica admits. “It was to protect them, but..”

“They think everyone’s their  _ friends.”  _ Anya’s legs are starting to cramp. She’s not built for this kind of hunching, and her shoulders feel as if they’re apt to fall off, if they stay much longer like this. “They’ve never had to deal with people lying to them,” Two continues. “They don’t know how to tell if something’s  _ using _ them.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Jeb says, and Jessica laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound, too brittle, but maybe that’s just Anya’s nerves.

“You  _ would  _ say that, wouldn’t you?”

“They want to  _ help,” _ Jeb says, dry. "We raised our children in comfort and safety. We raised them with love, and we taught them to pass it onto others. It's misdirected, but we should be proud. So they're young," he says. "But look at the entire picture. The daimons told them that they were subjugated, that they have been mistreated, and cast out from the community, and what are our children doing? They're trying to bring them back into it.

"My daughter -”

“Save us the lecture. Parvathi’s already given it  _ enough.  _ We all know how you’re raising your  _ daughter. _ But if either of your family’s methods worked,” Eze deadpans, “then Ravi wouldn’t be  _ dead, _ would he?”

There’s a silence. Anya looks at Marie, but all she does is shrug, her eyebrows knit.

Then Jessica says, slowly: “- that’s over the line.”

“It’s the  _ truth,” _ Eze says, sharp. “Get off your fucking high horse, Jeb. Our kids - they’re  _ kids,  _ they’re not that  _ smart. _ It isn’t about morals. They’re not thinking of this like it’s some kind of religious goddamn -”

“Language,” Jeb cuts in, soft.

“-  _ goddamned _ ceremony,” Eze continues, raising his voice. “They’re not doing this because they think they’re  _ saving _ a bunch of false gods. They’re doing this because they’re teenagers, and they’re lemmings for a bad idea, and they think they’re getting one over on us. They think this’s like skipping  _ class. _ And if it hasn’t spread through the entire town, Eze my words, it’s  _ going _ to. Unless we cut it short right now. Just -” 

There’s the sound of movement, and then Eze’s in front of the lockers. His skin puckers and peels in front of her, shapes pulsing underneath the skin. Something ripples, thrusting towards her through the skin, but Anya can’t bear to close her eyes.

Marie shrinks down, shoulders high, but there’s nowhere to retreat, and Anya can’t bend anymore, not with Marie right there, her head already pushing against the curve of Anya’s chin. Her back is to a metal wall. The only way out of the locker right now is through the Lucid, and..

He’s shorter than Anya, she thinks, but he’d looked like he weighed at least twice as much.

She can’t feel Marie breathing against her. Anya’s lungs are burning, but she thinks, if she breathes out, she might just scream instead.

Because there’s nowhere to look, except at Eze.

His skin warps and distorts in front of her eyes, features sinking in and bulging out in turn. His cheekbone twists, swelling outwards. An eye blinks at the two of them through the locker vents, unseeing, thick black lashes hanging low - and then it reddens, veins growing through it in streaks as it sinks back into his skin.

Marie buries her face in Anya’s shoulder. Anya’s lungs are burning, but she bites her tongue, hard, her fingers curling into fists.

“I’m going to petition it to the Voice again,” Eze says, and finally,  _ finally, _ he steps away. “They have to understand. Put aside your religious shit for a minute, Jeb.  _ Jess _ . Can I count on you to help? Because I  _ know _ they don’t want to do anything. I  _ know  _ they think, if we just silence the Adversary, the rest of it will sort itself out. But it’s not  _ going _ to. If we want any chance of this not taking over, we need to handle it  _ now.” _

_   
_ “Disagreeing with the Voice too often,” Jeb says, slowly, “is not a wise decision to make, Eze. We’re supposed to be  _ unified.” _

“That’s easy to say when it’s not  _ your _ daughter who has to be put into Saturation Control,” Eze barks. Anya looks at Marie, and mouths:  _ ‘Saturation Control?’ _

But there’s no spark of awareness on her face. Marie shrugs, her eyes wide, and Anya’s gut twists. It sounds like a punishment, whatever it is. And Gwen had said that they needed to get Sydney’s phone, before it was found. Before something could  _ happen. _

Saturation Control, the Voice.. Anya doesn’t know what either of those are, but she can’t imagine they’re anything good.

“How are we supposed to be unified in the face of  _ that?  _ She’s  _ sixteen. _ We don’t even know what it’s going to  _ do _ to her.”

“So you’d have us all do it to our children, instead. Let them  _ all _ suffer.”

She can’t imagine it’s anything good at  _ all. _

“At least they’ll all be unified in  _ that -” _

“Daddy,” someone says, and Marie lifts her head.

The voice isn’t an adult. It sounds like Xaviul, when he first wakes up in the morning and he’s still got one foot left in his dreams: like they’re not entirely aware of the words they’re saying, even as they come out of their mouth. “Dad,” the girl says, “why is it so  _ sunny? _ I thought the weather said it’d be rain..”

“Oh, Eze! I told you that you were upsetting the  _ Sleepers,” _ Jessica snaps.

“Shhh.” There’s a rustle of fabric. Marie’s eyes are wide as she stares at the locker. Her entire body’s tense, but Anya isn’t sure why, or why she looks like she’s about to bolt. “The weather channel’s not reliable, Syd,” Eze says, so much softer, soft enough that he doesn’t even sound the  _ same, _ anymore. “That’s all. Besides, better to be sunny, right?”

“Guess so,” she murmurs. “Can we head to the park?”

“Of course we can.” There’s the rustle of fabric again. Marie’s face is reddening, so quickly that it looks like she might just explode. Anya tightens her grip around her, but Marie’s already starting to push against it. “Here,” Eze says. “I’ve just got to get - shit -  _ uh  _ \- a football first! Give Dad just a second -”

He steps back in front of the locker.

Marie balls her fists together, and Anya doesn’t know what to do. They’re trapped here. She doesn’t know how many Sleepers there are outside, or how many Lucids, exactly. Could they handle three Lucids? Maybe. But with the sleepers? Astro’s still above, but -

Anya hopes they ran back to the clubhouse, the way that she should’ve grabbed Marie and run when she’d first realised the Lucids were there.

Eze’s hand wraps around the locker handle. Anya watches it twist, her heart in her mouth. Marie’s shaking, but Anya’s trying to think. If they just take a swing - the both of them, as soon as the door opens - they might have a chance.

They might, Anya thinks, if he wasn’t their weight put together, and -

Her hands are sweating, but they’ll have to try.

There’s nothing they can do, except  _ try. _

The door starts to tug open.

Off in the distance, something  _ shrieks. _ Then there’s a burst of light, dulled by the vents, and a pulse of noise, three sharp bangs all in succession, and -

And Eze’s turning away, his shoulders up.

Anya’s used to gunshots. The sound’s too soft for that, and too long, and only a few people in Redacre own a gun. But every household had firecrackers left over from the Fourth of July, and Astro had filled their backpack full of them.

She wants to laugh. She curls her arms around Marie instead, tighter, and wraps a hand around her wrist.

  
“What the fuck is that?” Eze demands. The locker door’s resting half ajar, the crack just big enough for light to pour in. But no one’s paying attention to it. For the best, Anya thinks, because she can’t pay attention to the Lucid’s  _ voices. _ There’s too much noise, suddenly: everyone’s talking at once, and moving across the metal floor, their boots slapping, and it’s all just washing over her, too much to process, too much to sort anything out.

The only thing she can recognise is the sound of Marie’s sharp exhale, like a balloon deflating, and her own ragged breath.

There’s the sound of a door snatching open, then the click of it shutting, and then.. it’s just silence, heavy as a blanket over the room. Anya isn’t sure how long they stay hiding in the locker. But Marie finally stirs. She jerks her head, sharp, shrugging off Anya like she’s a coat, and then she reaches for the knob.

It turns under her hand, yanking open.

Astro’s face is red, mottled like a peach from exertion. **‘That was** ** _something,’_** they sign, the gestures jagged. **‘They’re off in the main corridor. I’ve got fireworks rigged up down the hall. So they’ll follow that for a bit, but they’re going to figure it out.’**

“What the  _ hell,” _ Anya says, and her voice rasps, “is Saturation Control?”

Her voice, she realises, is  _ shaking _ . But she doesn’t feel scared, exactly. She just feels -  _ sick,  _ and depleted, like a bag freshly emptied. Astro’s right here. She doesn’t need to be scared anymore, not with the Lucids gone. Not when the wires have begun pulsing above them again.

She doesn’t know when they started back up. But the sound of them’s a relief, almos, and in the absence of her fear, something else’s creeping back in. “Was that - that was Sydney’s  _ da,” _ she says, looking at Marie. There’s iron in her mouth. Her tongue’s starting to smart. “Wasn’t it? That was  _ Sydney?” _

Marie’s face is pale. “I don’t know,” she says. She looks like she’s about to be sick. “I don’t - I’ve never heard that word before,  _ chica _ . Astro? Have you?”

**‘I don’t know what it is,’** Astro sign, looking between the two of them,  **‘but if you’re going to look for her phone, we need to do it** **_now_ ** **.’**

“She was in the room with us, Astro.” Anya can’t bring herself to care about the phone, not when she’s starting to realise what she heard.  _ Shall we punish  _ all  _ of the children?  _ Two had asked, and then they’d taken Sydney away, to who knows where.

“They’re  _ taking her somewhere,” _ Anya says, sick and angry and sad, all at once. “They’ve got her - she’s -” Anya’s seen children led out of their homes by the Lucids before, and through the streets. Everyone in the club knows that sometimes, when they sleep outside of the boxcar, Sleep-as-One takes their body over, and if they’re lucky, they’ll wake up in their beds the next day, none-the-wiser.

No one knows what the children do, when they’re asleep. No one ever remembers.

Was this what it looked like, when they were in blackouts? Sydney had spoken, groggy but clear. She’d questioned what was going on. CHORUS led the children while they were asleep, but -

The sleepers were puppets on Speak-as-One’s strings. They spoke, and they moved, and they called out to the children they saw, with accusations or the sickly sweet coaxing of a mother calling their child. They weren’t asleep, not entirely, but at night, the only thing they valued was the Song, and the whispers of the Voice that led it.

“Are they going to turn us into  _ \- them?” _ she demands, her voice shaking, because - that’d been Sydney’s  _ father,  _ talking about leading her to wherever that was, and he hadn’t so much as paused when the other Lucids called her a sleeper.

Two months ago, Anya’s mother had very nearly turned her over to CHORUS. She’d heard, at the last moment, and she’d fled into the woods. Anya has been living with the club ever since, but in all that time, she’s never really thought about what would have happened if she’d gone with CHORUS.

  
She’d never given it any thought at all.

There’s bile at the back of her throat. Marie’s shaking her head, hands halfway in the air like she can’t decide if she wants to sign or not. Behind her, Astro’s going through the lockers, pawing through the contents roughly before moving onto the next. “Anya -  _ chica - _ ”

“We can’t  _ leave her,” _ Anya says, her voice shaking. “We  _ can’t.  _ What’re they doing to her?”

“I don’t know,” Marie says, wretched. “I don’t  _ know, _ Anya.”

Astro looks back. They’re on the fourth locker in the row, now, but there’s dozens more still left in the room.  **‘I’m sorry, but if we don’t hurry up,’** they sign,  **‘we’ll find out first-hand.’**

Neither of them can argue with that.

They don’t have time to get through all of the lockers before the wires start slowing again. Contrasted to the music, their buzz had almost felt comforting earlier - but now, the sound feels like electricity in Anya’s blood. It’s not just her, she thinks. The wires barely started slowing before Marie gives in, her cheeks flushed. “Nah. Nah, I can’t - let’s just go,” she says, brittle. “We’re not going to find it, yeah? And even if we do -”

“There’s no point to it now, is there?” She takes a deep breath. “Saturation Control,” she repeats, scrubbing at her face with a palm. “Goddamnit.  _ Sydney. _ Alright. We’ve got to talk to Headquarters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Colonisation of the Blue Ridge started in the early 17th century. Anya is of the Monacan tribe, but their traditional territory didn't go all the way up into the mountains: her reference to her 'grandfather's grandfather' refers to the Manahoacs, who were supposedly absorbed into neighbouring tribes by the 1700's. Familial oral histories don't always quite match up with reality, turns out.


	6. In Which Lavi Faces a Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes light body horror, with a heavier emphasis on implication than description - if that bothers you, skip forward to "Anya opens her eyes."

When Anya opens her eyes, she's sitting in a theater.

She's never been in one before, but she knows what it is: she must've seen one, she thinks, on the tv or in a film. Because there's no mistaking the massive stage stretched in front of her, the wood pulled up in a slight incline towards the back. Curtains, heavy and red, sit at the corners. And down in the dip of the audience, all around Anya, are what must be hundreds and hundreds of chairs, curved in a perfect half-circle around it.

They're empty. There's no one else in the room, not that she can see. And for all that there's no lights on the walls, or nestled between the seats, Anya can see everything. The room's as well-lit as the school always had been, even if she can't tell why.

She'd fallen asleep in the boxcar, Anya thinks. She's been trying not to sleep, but there came a point that it must have gotten too much: after twenty, twenty two hours of staying awake, when the pencil started shaking in her hands, she might’ve just given in. It’s so easy, sometimes, to put your head on the table, and close your eyes, and promise that you’ll open them in a minute or two.

Anya’s never broken a promise before, lest of all to herself, but she reckons there always must be a first.

The last she remembers, it’d been daytime. There'd been kids in the boxcar, any of whom could’ve woken her, but didn’t. She would’ve fallen asleep in the main car. She should’ve been woken up by something - the creak of the walls, the shriek of the door.. the boxcar’s always full of noise.

But this isn't the boxcar, and all around her, the theater’s quiet.

The back of the chair in front of her's rough against her skin as Anya braces herself on it, pulls herself up. Her legs are shaking, hard enough that her knees knock, and there's an acidic burn at the back of her throat. She'd slept! She shouldn't be tired. But her legs ache like she's run a marathon.

Or, she thinks, grim, like she'd walked across town. Because, as her mind clears more and more from the fog of sleep, she knows there's a theater in town. Hadn't someone told her as much?

The first time that Anya tries to speak, all that comes out is a rasp, like the scrape of her knife over sandpaper, and with enough pain to match. When she tries to swallow, it just stings. But she forces her way past it. "Are you having a little laugh?" she demands. She doesn't know who she's talking to. She doesn't, Anya thinks, really care. "Do you think this is funny? 'cause let me say -"

The lights go out.

"- it ain't," she says into the darkness, and she swallows the rest of her words.

Anya doesn't think of herself as deaf. That's something for Astro's ma's to claim. She ain't incapable of hearing. She can catch the gist of things well enough, if it doesn't go too low or too high, and she's keen enough to have figured out how best to work with that. Folks lips give away their words, some. But if you watch their expressions, and catch enough words, and pay attention to the rest of what's being said, you don't need to hear much to catch the gist of it.

She doesn't think of herself as deaf, but that's with folks, and when she's out in the woods, where she knows what every sound ought to be, and she's long figured out which ones she needs to be paying mind to. Here, in the theater.. it's just silence, save for the rasp of her own breath, reedy from pain. When the lights were on, it didn't matter much. She could see.

Now, if anyone else is in the room - if anyone else is coming near - she can't tell at all.

Her legs feel like they're weeping with each motion. But she starts moving, careful along the seats, using the backs as a guide. There's a glow on the stage in front of her, gradually building, giving just enough light for her to see the backs of each seat nearest to her. It's fine. When she feels with her feet, she can tell where the floor starts to dip, and if there's anyone near, she reckons she'll feel 'em with her hands before they feel her.

She hopes, at least.

But there's nobody here. Each seat's empty. The only sound she hears is her own breath, and her own footsteps, not anybody elses. No one stops her as she makes her way towards the middle of the room, where the rows of seats split. Anya doesn't know if there's an exit there, but a theater ain't so different from the movies, she figures, and it feels right. All she's got to do is make it there, and then she can leave, and head back to the boxcar, away from whatever's building.

There's the sound of footsteps on wood. Anya ducks down, shoulders hunching as she tugs her arms in tight. The seats ain't quite big enough to hide her proper. Every bit of her that sticks out feels like it's got a burning brand on it - the crown of her head, the edge of her elbows, no matter how she tucks 'em - but she ain't quite willing to go flat on the floor, not just yet, not when she doens't know what's going on.

She hadn't noticed before, but there's a gap between the seat and the arm rest, just big for her to peer through at the stage. It wasn't one set of footsteps she'd heard, she realises, but two - because there's a pair of folks up there, long-legged and slender, dressed in something almost like a swimsuit, but thicker. It's white, and as Anya watches, the lights above them brighten until the fabric's almost glowing.

She can't see their faces like this. But their bodies are perfectly, impossibly visible under the spotlight, clearly as if she'd drawn them with pencil and paper.

The room's too hot. There's sweat prickling at the edge of Anya's scalp, and when she wipes it away, it's just back in moments.

The first steps forward. She's long-legged and graceful in a way that reminds Anya of Bambi, each step as precise and careful as if it was planned. Her partner's got the same kind of build. They look as if they were made for this, Anya thinks, in the same way a hound was made for the hunt. Because when they step into the center of the stage, it's with that same easy, perfect grace.

And they're still matched as they pivot around each other. He takes a step forward, and she takes a step back. She reaches out, and he leans forward, fingers brushing, but not quite meeting. Their dance takes them in a circle, and Anya feels like she could almost see it, if she squinted: the path that their footsteps have left.

There’s something familiar about the woman’s face. She’s got thin blonde hair plastered by sweat against her forehead, and a snub of a nose that Anya thinks she must’ve seen before. There’s a blush of colour across her cheeks, a near perfect match for the veins of red through her eyes, and Anya’s sure she’s seen her before, but she doesn’t know where.

Off in the distance, there's music playing. She can't catch the tune of it, but she can hear it, she thinks, a distant crack of something right on the edge of her hearing.

On the stage, the blonde woman's arched up onto one leg. She stretches herself out, her spine a smooth, perfect line that cuts through the light. Her arm is out, and -

There's sweat in her eyes. Anya blinks, but that doesn't help: it takes rubbing them, firmly, with the back of her palms to finally clear them. And when she turns her attention back to the stage, something's changed.

The blonde woman's lifting the man, now. He's twisted himself into a pose that she wouldn't have thought possible: one hand braced on the woman's upper thigh, as she stretches her arm taut to hold his calf. His leg is braced on her back.

His face is angled down towards Anya, now, just barely out of the light. Shadows curl around the edge of it. His neck is still covered in that impossibly white fabric, left near-glowing by the light, but she can see his face.

There's nothing there. It's like someone'd stretched leather over a skull: she can see the hollows of his eyes, and the dip of his nose, but there's nothing there to fill them. There's just the skin, and the muscle under it, and the way the skin's stretched taut, impossibly pulled into a grimace.

Something cracks.

It's not music at all, Anya realises, because the blonde woman's twisting on stage. Her leg is hooked around the eyeless man's, now, but her flesh is drawing taut as the bone pushes against it.

It's not meant to bend like that. People aren't meant to bend like that, but the woman's stretching further and further, and those impossible legs are pulling to accommodate it. There's another snap of bone, almost rhythmic.

There's the creak of something pulling taut under the skin.

There's a low whine in her ears, and it takes Anya a moment to realise it's not coming from the lights, but coming from her.

The bodies are twisting. They're pulling into a pose that Anya feels like she ought’ve seen before, joints cracking, muscles pulling into a crude symbol that stands out like a star against the dark velvet back curtains -

"Hey there, kiddo," something drawls behind her, and the knot snaps. Anya shrieks.

When she twists around, her knees catch on the back of the seat behind her. When she jerks, it folds, and she goes sliding back - but her hand is lashing out, and she grabs the rail between rows just in time. There's nothing in front of her.

Behind her, on the stage, something bursts, a wet, sharp sound.

"Who -"

Someone laughs. "Calm down," they say, sweet as sugar, and - they're to the left of her, Anya thinks, or the sound is. Her heart feels like it's bashing against her ribs, over and over, each movement a new bolt of pain. "Calm down," the voice says again, and now it's firmer, just like her mothers. The voice's moved. It's behind her again, like it's too restless to just hold still.

Or like it has enough sense to keep moving. "I know you're scared, but -" They drag out the word, and from somewhere in the distance, there's an echo, faint but still audible.

Anya swallows hard, curling her hands into fists.

They're still behind her, it sounds like. They must be, because their voice's so much crisper than Anya's ever heard anyone be. But if she turns, she'll be facing the stage, and Anya knows she doesn't want to look back at the stage. "Uh, but you want to hear me out -"

Anya turns, and swings.

Her fist hits something soft. It crunches, but she can't see whatever it is. Her eyes are squeezed shut, tight, because she doesn't know what's going on here, but she doesn't have to see it.

They took her here while she was asleep, Anya thinks, but she'll be damned if they make her watch whatever it is they're doing.

There's sounds all around her now, loud enough that they overwhelm even the frantic race of her heart. There's voices, but - they don't have the same clarity as the first. They're muffled, and they're frantic, and they're wet, almost, in a queer kind of way. And there's none of the theater's queasy silence under that.

There's the sound of people breathing. Somewhere off in the distance, at the edge of her hearing, she can hear something small and shrill.

Anya opens her eyes.

The boxcar is so much brighter than the theater was. There's daylight still pouring in through the holes in the roof, and there's the glow of a laptop off in the corner, casting dim shadows everywhere that isn't swallowed up by the haze of the sunlight. Anya has to blink twice to get the spots from her eyes entirely, and when she does, Martha's rocking back on her heels, a hand to her nose. Red trickles in a stream down through her fingers, and under it, her mouth's a thin, grim line.

"Good morning to you too," she says, wry. Even squinched tight with pain, Martha’s eyes are still bloodshot, like she ain’t ever slept a night in her life. "Don't you know you're supposed to say hello first?"

Anya takes a deep breath.

"She's up," Martha calls out, not quite smiling. "Jesus christ, she's up."

"You think Jesus wants to look in on this?" Anya had mistaken Marie as one of the sleeping bags at first. But then the lump she'd mistaken as a pillow sits up, passing in front of the laptop, and turns to face her. Marie's hair is askew, and her eyes are dark, like she hasn't slept. "Girl, even I don't want to look in on this. D'you wanna put ice on that?"

"Do you have ice?" Martha asks.

"I have some cold-ass hands." Marie holds out her hands, wriggling the fingers. "C'mere, and I'll show you."

When Anya pushes the sleeping bag off of her legs, it tries to stick to her skin.

She doesn't remember climbing into her sleeping bag last night. The last thing she remembers is closing her eyes while she'd been working, to rest for just a minute. But she hadn't gone to sleep.

It'd only been to rest for a minute, she thinks. It’d been only for a minute. She’d counted.

"I think I'll pass." Delicately, Martha rubs the hem of her shirt against her nose. Her face's scrunched. "Sweet as that is!"

"You woke me up," Anya says, her mouth dry. She's still wearing the same clothes as last night. Maybe she'd just forgotten, she thinks, getting into bed, and pulling the sleeping bag tight? But her shoes are on the ground outside of the sleeping bag, the laces neatly undone and.. Xaviul undoes his laces, not her.

"You were having nightmares, chica," Marie says with a shrug. "I figured you didn't want to stay in 'em, yeah?"

"I don't dream," she says, flat, and Martha rolls her eyes. She's dabbed the blood off of her face, and though the skin's still sticky brown under her nose, she doesn't seem to care further.

"Then what,” Martha says, amused, leaning down to look at her, “were you thrashing about?”

Light shines down on Martha's face.

The boxcar walls behind her are red. Martha's got a distinct face. It's pretty in a way that reminds Anya of the girls from the movies, with their large eyes and dimpling smiles, but more than that, it's striking, the sort of features that Anya doesn't think she'll ever forget: not the freckles across her nose, or the dimples in her cheeks, or the yellow-green of her eyes.

The dancer on the stage had had Martha's bloodshot eyes. She'd had the same red blush across her nose, and the same button of a nose. She'd had the same long limbs. She'd moved with the same grace and ease.

And when Martha stretches, arms pulling long behind her head, the ribbed walls of the boxcar almost look like curtains.

"I need to go," Anya says, pushing herself up. There's bile in the back of her throat, burning like magma. Martha's paused midstretch, her eyebrows up, but Marie holds up a hand.

"Bucket's out back," she calls as Anya flees out the boxcar door.

There's kids crowded around the central boxcar, but Anya doesn't pay them any mind as she bolts right past them and towards the woods. There’s just enough wind to soothe the sweat on her skin. The boxcar had been so stuffy, too full of people, too full of risk, and - Anya’s never thought of it that way before. It’s always been safe, before.

There’s the sharp snap of twigs underfoot, and the sting of nettles digging into her soles. Her heart’s in her throat, and every bit and bob of her body, it seems like, is protesting: from the throb of her heart to the slap of branches whipping past her skin. But she wants to get away from the boxcar.

Others deal with things in their sleep. Others dream. Anya doesn’t. She’s fought to make sure she doesn’t, for all that it leaves her groggy and exhausted more often than not. Except she’d dreamed, leaving the crack of her mind open, and something had climbed in through the door.

Not something. Someone.

There’s no one around her in the woods when she comes to a stop. It’s just her, and trees, and the birds, singing somewhere off in the distance. Light shines down at her, dappled red by the leaves, and Anya lets out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding.

The forest here is empty. There’s nothing that she can hear, save the ragged rasp of her own breath, and the gentle cooing of a dove somewhere near. There’s no one here, except her.

And whatever - whoever - may be in her head.

“Don’t talk to me,” Anya says aloud, the words brittle. “Don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t even -” The dove’s cooing fades. It’s just her, and Anya feels like a fool, standing out here. Who is she speaking to? Who could even hear her? Was there even a point to it?

It doesn’t feel like it. It just feels like she’s too small for her own skin, suddenly, or like there’s something else in it. And it ain’t a fair way to feel, Anya thinks. She was here first. She’s the only one that’s owed her body, and it’s hers, before it’s anyone else’s, and..

Anya takes a deep breath. She walks over to the nearest tree, and bonks her head into it, light. “You’re being a fool, girl,” she tells herself, and if her tone isn’t as danger-deep as her grandpa’s, at least the words are right. There’s a caterpillar inching along the bark about a handspan down, and she makes herself watch the slow rise and fall of its wriggling, match her breath to its gradual squash. “You’re being a fool, and you’re doing too much.”

The bark of the tree is rough against her skin. But it’s nice. It’s the sort of rough that demands her attention, over anything else, like the beat of her heart or the faint chill of sweat on her chin. It’s harder to worry about someone else being in her skin, when every bit of her is feeling something.

It’s just like nature itself. Staying in the boxcar had felt impossible, when there was so little to keep her mind on, apart from her, and Marie, and the blood on Martha’s face. Her dream had felt real in there, but out here, with the dove back to hooting gently above her, and critters crawling on the bark below her..

She’d been spooked by the dream. But had it even been Dance-for-Us? Or was she just afraid it was? Sacrifice is just an awfully big word, she decides, and one that’d left a mark. But she’s never sacrificed anything to anyone. There’s no cause for her to worry.

“You’ve never worried,” she tells the caterpillar, dry. It wriggles. For a caterpillar, she reckons, it might well be agreement. “I bet you’ve never even thought about worrying, have you? All you do is eat, and weave, and wander around.”

It’s a good way to live life, she thinks, and she’s about to say as much, when a wasp lands on top of the caterpillar, and stabs its stinger right through.

Anya shrieks, flailing back. She lands on her rump, twigs digging in, and the wasp - the wasp lifts up, the caterpillar clutched neatly in its legs, and it flies in a lazy circle away into the grasses.

* * *

By the time Anya finally makes it back to the boxcar, she’s got cuts all over her hands, and a neat slice in the sole of one of her feet. Trawling the woods without her shoes hadn’t been the brightest idea, but she can’t bring herself to regret it, not even when Xaviul starts fussing.

It’d been a few, good hours of doing enough things to forget she’d ever been worried at all. It’d been worth it, no matter how much she’s aching now, because she can feel the unease folding back over her shoulders soon as she reaches headquarters.

Marie hadn’t told everyone about Sydney. She’d just told Gwenna, as far as Anya knows, but it doesn’t matter none: there’s a gloom to everyone, like they’re just waiting for the shoe to drop.

There's no grand meeting that night, for all that Anya had half-expected one. She'd waited with caught breath when Dax had called them all together, but he hadn’t made any grand announcements, and no one had asked about Sydney. When Gwenna passed out their assignments for the night, marking off each name in her notebook, Anya had dawdled near her side as she'd done it.

"Do you have any questions?" Gwenna had asked finally, looking at her sidelong.

And Anya couldn't think of anything to say, not with those dark eyes piercing her, so she'd turned and gone.

There hadn’t been a mission for her tonight, and in a way, Anya’s grateful. She doesn't know what she wants, exactly. There's just a question burning under her skin like the start of a rash, or her muscles after too long of a run, and - Anya doesn't believe in lying, even to herself, so she thinks that she might have an idea of it. She wants answers. She wants solutions.

Saturation Control was what the Lucid’s had said, before they’d hauled Sydney off, before she and Marie and Astro let the Lucids haul Sydney away. Marie had said she’d speak to Gwenna and ask, but Anya doesn’t see her around tonight to question, and there hadn’t been an announcement.

Everyone wants answers right now, but maybe there’s just none to be found.

The boxcar’s too empty for Anya to want to be around right now, especially with the tangle of memories from her dream still left. The woods don’t have much of a call, and she ain’t the sort to wander the town at night, adults around or no.

But she’s got to do something with the night, and even the thought of sleeping leaves a sour taste in her mouth. Anya had managed barely five, six hours the past night, light enough that she’d stirred every time the door had creaked, or the wind had caught the boxcars hole.And that’d been in the light of the day, when the daimons never seemed too keen to take a body out on a walk. Sleeping now just isn’t an option.

So she heads out to the river instead.

She’s not expecting to see someone there.

Lavi’s one of the smallest kids in the club, but even if they weren’t, it’d be impossible to miss the cloud of blue curls, as bright as any bluejays. Astro’s got their hair dyed, in the sort of soft blues of a robin’s egg or cornflowers, but it’s so mild that it nearly looks natural.

Lavi’s hair never does. Not much about them seems natural at all.

Anya's never met a kid with so many tears in them as Lavi. They cry as easily as they breathe, it seems like, but even rivers run dry, given enough time. Even trees do, for all that they're made of water and pulp, all the way down: she's seen the worn out husks of 'em in the areas nearest to the mines, dried and brittle like wood left out in the sun.

Lavi never runs out of tears. They're quiet, crying like this, with nary a sound to it - but their shoulders quake with each hitched breath, and Anya can see the soft plumes of dirt that spiral up every time one of their tears hits the ground.

She could walk away. Hadn't she done that before?

Anya wets her lips and steps near, instead. Lavi doesn't so much as stir. They might as well be in their own world, all tangled up in whatever's got them despairing, and they don't seem to notice anything around them: not the river, or Anya's footsteps, or her little clearing of her throat, right beside 'em.

They startle, though, when she lays a hand on their shoulder. "Lavi," she says, crisp, and then the rest of the words dry up. She's never been one for comforting folks. Has Xaviul ever cried like this?

Not where she could see it.

She doesn't know what to say, and when Lavi lifts their head to look up at her, they don't look like they've got much more idea. There's something familiar in their face, Anya thinks. Something about the twist of their mouth, maybe.

Or maybe it's the frustration in their eyes, because Lavi's voice is sharp as a nettle's edge. "What do you want?" they demand, snuffling. They've been crying well enough in silence, but maybe they'd only managed that by keeping their mouth shut: there's something like a sob behind their words, half-hidden, but impossible to ignore.

Anya could still leave. But she settles down on her haunches instead, knees bent, hovering more than sitting on the ground. She's near enough to touch Lavi, if she tried. She doesn't.

She doesn't even look at them. She looks out at the water instead, where the light's dancing across the waves. Her grandpa had been in the military when he was young, and Anya's seen pictures from all across the world. None of them compare to the way that Redacre looks in the fall, she thinks, so she keeps her eyes on that, and only watches Lavi out of the corner of her eye.

"You alright?" Anya asks, and Lavi -

Lvai laughs, choked.

"I'm doing just, like, super great," they say, their words bright and brittle. "Can't you tell? That's, like - I'm so -" There's a rustle of motion in the corner of her eye, but Anya keeps her gaze fixed on the waves. "I'm so fucking happy right now, I thought - I thought it'd be -"

They take in a long, wavering breath. "I thought it'd be obvious," they said in a rush, like water tumbling over a dam, and there's the sob, tangling up right at the end. "Super fucking obvious!"

She’s never seen them get mean like this. But anything bites, she thinks, if they feel cornered.

"If you want me to go," Anya says, mild, "I'll get going. But if you want to talk about it.."

She doesn't want to talk about it. There's nothing that Anya wants more than to just leave, and leave Lavi to - whatever they're up to, crying all on their lonesome. She's never felt any need for others around when she's wept. But Lavi isn't like her.

And Xaviul had said she needed to try and be kind.

“You don’t like me,” Lavi says, plainative. Their eyes are bright as embers, even if their words are dripping with that wounded tone of theirs. “I know it and you know it! You’re - you’re -” They hiccup. “You’re always mean! What d’you even want?”

“I want to help,” Anya says, and Lavi laughs, hiccupy and sad.

“You do not.”

“I do,” Anya insists, a little stilted. She ain’t used to this kind of thing, but when she tries to think of what Marie would do - or Martha, or Cindy, or even Xaviul - her mind comes up blank. She’s not them. And if Lavi already thinks she’s faking, wouldn't copying their friends just prove them right?

“We’re - friends with our friends,” Anya tries instead. She’s still not looking at Lavi straight on. But she can see enough of their expression to catch the way their eyebrows knit. “And we’re both in the club. Maybe we ain’t close, but.. doesn’t mean I want to see you yowlin’.”

There's a queer sound beside her. When she looks, Lavi's looking back. They curl their lip, as contemptuous as any dog, and Anya's breath catches. Because for a moment, Lavi looks just like her ma, twining her fingers through the phone cord after a long shift, railing away about someone or another to someone Anya doesn't know.

They look just like Anya.

Then the moment passes. It’s a lack of sleep, Anya thinks, because Lavi's expression shifts, and it's just Lavi: round-faced and soft, with their button of a nose and big, wet eyes all scrunched up. "That's dumb," they say, sulking. "I don't - I'm not a baby."

"'course you're not." She ain’t handling this well. Anya’s meant for tromping through the woods, and hunting, and fixing things: things, not people, who are always so much messier than a hole in the boxcars roof. But Xaviul had told her that she had to try, at least. So never minding the way she wants to get up and go, Anya takes a breath.

“You worried about Tommy?” she tries, and Lavi -

Lavi’s face crumples.

“I -” They have to take a deep breath to clear their throat, because their words keep catching on a hitch in it. “He hasn’t been in school for days,” they say, scrubbing a fist against their eyes. “He hasn’t been in school, and his parents - they -” They take another deep breath.

“They asked my parents if they’ve seen him,” they cry. “Because they haven’t! He just - he was at home one night, and then he wasn’t, and we haven’t seen him, and his parents haven’t seen him, and mine - mine don’t even know where he is!”

The night’s warm, but there’s goosebumps at the back of Anya’s neck. “Oh,” she says, and it takes her a moment longer to sort out her thoughts. “And your parents -”

“They’re Lucids.” Lavi’s voice lifts up in a wail, but they swallow it at the last minute, burying their face in their hands. “They’re Lucids, and if he was just - if they just - if they were kidnapping people, then they’d know. But they don’t. They don’t know, and his parents don’t know, and we don’t know, and -

“What if he’s dead?” Lavi cries out. “What if he’s dead, or - or - worse?

“What if Thee-I-Dare took him?”

Anya looks up. It’s a reflex, but - there’s no one there or around them, on either side of the river, no matter where she looks. She can’t shake the feeling, though, that something’s watching.

It’s superstition, she thinks. All the same, she murmurs: “- Lavi, you ain’t supposed to -”

Lavi laughs.

It’s a wet, hollow sound, like a frog climbing out of the mud. “I don’t care if he hears us,” they say, venomous. “I don’t care, because - because he’s awful, Anya, he’s awful and cruel and - and if Tommy’s dead - it’s his fault!” Their voice cracks. Their face had been bright with a righteous sort of fury, but it falters now. Their face falls. “It’s his fault,” they say, softer. “If he hadn’t come, none of this - none of it would’ve happened, and we’d all be fine.”

There’s a lot of things that Anya could say here. There’s even more that she could ask. She’d thought of Lavi as nothing more than a ball of cotton candy, if she’s honest, full of tears ready to melt their own sense away, but it ain’t like she can dismiss what they’re saying. There’s a sense to it.

And it isn’t like Anya hasn’t thought it herself.

There’s long grass near the river bank, little tufts that shoes haven’t quite worn down. Anya plucks one and chews on the end of it as she turns over her thoughts. Lots of things she could ask, but maybe not as many that she should.

What she settles on is:

“You afraid it’ll happen to us?”

Lavi’s quiet for one long, long moment. There’s just the sound of Anya’s breathing, the steady ripple of the river, and Lavi’s own breath, still hitching and struggling even now.

“Aren’t you?” they say, finally, and a few minutes ago, Anya would’ve been startled over how sharp they sound. But Lavi’s not just sugar, she thinks. There’s more to them than their fears and their tears, because this is more thought than most of the boxcar kids are even willing to voice.

More than Lavi’s ever been willing to, and Anya wonders why.

“C’mon,” she says, standing up, and she starts walking. After a few steps, she pauses, and looks back.

Lavi’s still on the riverbank. Their eyes are a bright and rheumy red against the dark of their face. They’re wide enough that the whites of ‘em look like paint, almost, or marble, because Lavi’s still enough to pass as a statue made of one.

Anya raises her eyebrows. She waits.

Then Lavi climbs to their feet with a great, heaving sigh, and follows after them.

Fall isn’t Anya’s favourite season, exactly: she prefers the early summer, when the deer have just fawned and the woods are full of freshly bursting life. Everything’s green and blue and white, then, with dashes of yellow for variety, and it always feels like the way the world ought to be.

But when the leaves spiral down around them as she leads Lavi up past the river, and towards the high slope of the cliff, Anya has to admit: there’s a certain beauty to fall. The tree’s are all red and yellow now, brilliant crimsons and golds and tangerines that remind her of the sunset. When the light shines through them, it dapples across her arms and hands, leaving them tinged with that same red.

Anya’s almost disappointed when the trees thin out around them, and they step out back into the open.

Hoadley’s Leap isn’t just one cliff. It’s a series of ‘em, all along the border of the town, and this one doesn’t even feel like it ought to properly qualify. Oh, there’s a drop there, long and steep enough that it’d kill if someone slid.. but the cliff edge near the boxcar is less of a leap, and more of a slope.

The ground slopes down, all delicate green grasses and half-grown saplings, and with the trees off in the distance, branches pulsing like a blood red wave, it doesn’t look dangerous at all. It’s the sort of place that Lavi would like, Anya thinks, and when she looks side-long at them..

Their eyes are wide. “Oh, wow,” they breathe. “Oh, this is.. something.” They bite their lip, peering up at her, and there’s something strange in their voice when they say: “I didn’t know that this was here at all.”

Once, centuries and centuries ago, Anya thinks, there might’ve been houses here. Because ten, twenty feet back from the cliff’s edge is a small stone wall, made with thick, heavy rocks still half-stacked up. Once, it might’ve been part of a house. Now, it’s just the right size for folks to sit on, and Lavi’s right behind her as she settles atop of it.

Lavi’s still looking around. Their eyes are red, the skin underneath puffy, but there’s something new in them, bright like they’ve never seen a sight like this before. Maybe they haven’t. Most of the kids in the club never leave the boxcar, ‘cept when they have to. How many of them have explored the woods around it?

How many of them ever go near the cliff’s edge?

“This is really pretty,” Lavi’s saying, but Anya cuts them.

“You’re still fussin’,” she says, and Lavi flushes. Their mouth twists to the side, like they’re going to say something sour. They don’t, though.

They just puff out their cheeks, kicking out their legs to the full length. It’s not much. Anya never feels big when she’s with Xaviul or Astro, but compared to Lavi, she’s practically the hound to their terrier.

Or the hound to their cat, because for all that she’s brought them up here, she’s not quite sure how to keep going. But Lavi doesn’t seem keen to take the lead. They let the silence sit, until Anya finally dredges the words together.

“There’s nothing wrong with fussin’,” she says, careful. She’s never been one for comforting folks, and she’s seen how others handle Lavi, like they’re made of spun glass ready to break. Anya’s not sure she can do that, but maybe she doesn’t have to. “Everyone does it.”

“You don’t do it,” Lavi fires off. “You don’t - feel bad about all of this, do you? You just - get mad.”

“I’m learnin’ not to,” Anya says.

Lavi’s cheeks are still puffed all out, their legs stretched high. Like they’re tryin’ to make themselves bigger, Anya thinks, but there’s no helping it: they could pull and stretch and tug as much as they want, and they’ll never be of a size to her. It’s a silly kind of thing to do.

And maybe that thought’s striking Lavi, too, because they deflate, just as quick as they swelled. “I’m just - ” But their words fail them, maybe, because they don’t finish up - they just stop, twisting their mouth to the side, and to Anya’s horror, their eyes refill with tears.

“I’m scared, too,” she admits suddenly, because anything’s better than having Lavi back to wailing. “I’m scared all the damn time.” It’s more than she’s admitted to anybody but Xaviul. The words feel wrong in her mouth, but..

But Lavi is looking at her, their tears forgotten, their eyes wide, so Anya keeps going, stilted though her words come out. “I had -” That isn’t what she wants to say, not exactly. It makes it sound like something that happened to her. “I dreamed about one of the daimons,” she says instead, “last night. And I think..”

She can’t say it. I think she took off my shoes, and put me in bed sounds - it makes the daimons sound like their parents, almost, and the thought’s too bitter to tolerate. Her mother lied to her. The daimons lied, too, but -

“Oh, Anya,” Lavi breathes, and leans against her, nestling their head onto her shoulder.

Lavi’s small, and round, and far warmer than anyone their size ought to be. It’s a little uncomfortable to have their curls tickling at her cheek, but there’s a strange kind of comfort to it, too. Anya’s seen Martha and Cindy sprawled out before, and the casual way that Xaviul and Astro shove. She’s never been one for that sort of affection, though. The only person’s that’s ever hugged her much has been family.

She hadn’t thought she’d care for it, if anyone had asked her. But Lavi’s always touching her, and everyone else, and.. warm or not, Anya doesn’t think she really minds, not right now. There’s a kind of comfort to it.

“It’s just.. horrible. They come and they talk to you and they do things,” Lavi says, “no matter what you do! You can’t stop them. All you can do is.. is decide if you’re going to work with them, or not. And Tommy - Tommy decided to work with ‘em, and sacrifice to - to the giant fuckhead in the cave, and - what did that get him?”

Lavi exhales. “What’s that going to get us?” they ask, plainative. “Is this going to happen to all of us? We just go missing, some day, and nobody knows what happens? Everyone’s just - just - left wondering?”

Anya wants to say no, but that’s a lie, she thinks. And Lavi thinks that everyone lies, but - that doesn’t make it true, anymore than the rest of the things they’re saying have to be. It could be that way. If they don’t do anything, it likely will be.

If the kids don’t disappear like Tommy, she thinks, they’ll just get taken like Sydney.

Unless they do something.

Gently, Anya shrugs Lavi off of her shoulder. Then she stands up, stretching out her arms behind her. The view here is gorgeous. Lavi’s curls are the same striking blue as the sky, and sitting on the wall, they almost look like a hole through the trees, and back to the horizon. But their eyes are still wide, and red, and with tears collecting at the bottoms.

Inspiration doesn’t strike, so much as it seeps in, one memory at a time: when she’d been the one sitting on stone, her knees up, and her eyes full of tears. Marie had knelt in front of her, and..

Anya takes Lavi’s hand. It’s bigger than she would’ve expected: a near mirror of hers, long-fingered and fine. She could say a lot of things right now, she thinks. She could say that it won’t happen.

“I won’t let that happen,” she says instead, firm. “Alright? We ain’t gonna go missing. We ain’t gonna get snatched. None of that. Not you, not me, not Xav, not Marie - none of us.”

Lavi looks at her. “You’re lying,” they say, but there’s something odd in their voice. “You can’t promise that.”

“I promise,” Anya says. “That’s.. what friends do, right?”

Lavi looks at her. And then they fling themself at her, locking their arms around her neck. They bury their face into her shoulder, and.. Anya can scarcely breathe around the curls, but she’s got bigger things to worry about.

“Why are you crying?” she demands, alarmed. It’s hard, but she manages to wrestle Lavi off of her, holding them firmly at arm’s length. There’s tears streaming down their brown cheeks, steadily for all that they’re no longer sobbing. They’re like a sweet birch, she thinks, switching from sweet to bitter so quickly that she can’t keep up.

Had she said the wrong thing?

“That’s so nice,” Lavi sniffs. “I - I just -” They take a deep, quavering breath. “I’m so glad we’re friends! I just - I’ve wanted us to be friends for so long!”

“Oh,” Anya says.

“I wanted us to be friends, and I’m - I’m - I promise, too! I’ll protect you, and Marie, and Xav, and - and - Astro -” They let go of her to scrub at their face. “We’ll protect each other,” they say, a little firmer, their eyes very bright. “No matter what. I promise, too. And if we both try, and work hard, and stick together.. then maybe..”

Lavi takes a deep breath. “Maybe we’ll all get out of this as one,” they say, and then they laugh, wet and a little sad.


	7. In Which Plans are Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless praise to the wonderful Kidskylark, my ever dedicated and much beloved betareader, who made this chapter possible. You're the best! And much love to Xav1ul, who helped heavily with Xaviul's dialogue and with being a great emotional support as I trudged through this chapter.
> 
> We're officially at a little over the halfway point in this story, so get hyped. It's been a delight to write this, and thanks to everyone who's been reading along! <3

Lavi’s looped their arm through Anya’s, and their fingers are very warm twined between hers. Anya keeps glancing down at them. She’s never had a friend like this before, but she’s seen the other girls cling like this. Martha and Cindy are inseparable, and Lavi hangs off of Marie like this, when they’ve got the opportunity. They hang off of Xaviul like this, when he doesn’t manage to duck and weave away. It’s strange, but..

It’s not unwelcome, not exactly. And there’s something very comfortable about walking like this, Lavi a steady weight at her side. Anya’s not exactly sure why Xaviul complains.

They’re on the edge of the boxcar’s clearing when Lavi stops and abruptly pulls away. “Oh,” they say, their eyes wide. “Oh!”

And then they bolt forward, leaving Anya blinking in the underbrush.

But when she enters the clearing, she can see why.

The entire area around the boxcar is packed to the brim with bodies. The sound of them’s a faint roar, loud enough that Anya more feels than she sees it: a sort of aching echo that settles in her teeth. It’s as grating as the noise, back when she’d been down deep in the maze, different but still the same. Anya’s not sure she’s ever seen this many people in the same spot, not anywhere except on the television. She hadn’t known there were this many children in the club.

But there’s kids, standing shoulder to shoulder, all crowded around the traincar’s dim entrance. Anya lingers on the edge of the crowd, trying to peer over the heads to spot someone she knows. She can see Lavi’s blue curls bobbing through the crowd, but when she calls out, they don’t stop.

And it’s too loud to hear if anyone is calling out to her.

She takes one step back, then another. The skin on the nape of her neck is crawling. She could just go back to the woods, she thinks, until - whatever this is settles. Because there’s nothing good to be found, here, and the crowd isn’t just talking. They’re talking over each other, their words an indecipherable wave, jostling and pushing as kids twist and turn to catch each new voice. And on every face that Anya sees, there’s unease - unhappiness - anger.

She’s about to turn and duck back under the safety of the trees when someone reaches out and grabs her arm.

Anya’s first impulse is to shove them. But she freezes instead, her hands curled into fists, and the boy who grabbed her doesn’t seem to notice at all. He’s talking too fast for her to follow, his eyes wide and wild. There’s sweat on the tip of his thin nose, threatening to drip off the end.

“I can’t hear you,” she tells him, flat, and tries to tug her arm away.

He doesn’t let her, and his grip’s strong enough that she can’t just wrench away, either. He just rolls his eyes, his lips thinning like she’s trying to cause him troubles on purpose. He says something else, and even looking at him, she can’t keep track of what he’s saying. He’s moving too fast. And there’s a glint of something impatient in his eyes.

“Are you stupid?” he demands, slow enough that he’s stretching each word like jerky.

Be kind, Xaviul had told her, but he’d never said how she should handle when folks weren’t being kind to her.

“Jesus christ,” the boy says, oblivious to the way her nails are pinching crescents into her skin. “Tommy! Did you hear what they said about Tommy?”

Folks are scared of you, Xaviul had told her.

“No,” she says, flat. “I didn’t.”

With a hiss of frustration, the boy lets go of her. “Absolutely useless,” he complains, and before she can say anything in turn, he’s shouldering his way back into the crowd, elbows poised to knock a fellow that doesn’t move.

When Anya smoothes back her hair, she realises her hands are shaking.

She doesn’t slip into the woods. She crosses her arms, her mouth pulling tight into a frown, and she lingers on the edge of the crowd. There’s a queasy unease in her stomach that ain’t got nothing to do with the number of folks in the crowd, and only a little to do with the boy. He’d asked about Tommy. Lavi had been weeping over him, when she’d found them, and now, when she puts her mind to it, she can almost make out a word in the crowd.

It’s like a pulse deep in her bones. Tommy is the word on everyone’s lips, said in a hundred different tones, and when the light in the boxcar shifts, and someone finally steps out, Anya’s breath catches.

The skin under Gwenna’s eyes is puffy, but what catches Anya’s attention is the eyes themselves. They’re red, red as the leaves crunching under foot, and so are her cheeks, ruddy under the dark flush of her skin. When Dax comes out next, Marie beside him, they don’t look much better.

Someone in the crowd keens. A girl, up closer to the top, and her friend startles, grabs a hold of her shoulders just in time for her to lunge forward. For a moment, she hangs, damn near airborne - then she collapses back against her friend. Anya can’t make out the words either of ‘em’s saying.

But she can hear Gwenna’s voice, clear as a bell even over the pulse of the crowd. “I’m sorry,” she says, wetting her lips. “We all heard about - both of them - in school. And -”

And the crowd erupts.

For a moment, it’s just noise. Everyone’s talking at once, and it hurts to hear - a senseless sort of wave that engulfs Anya’s senses, and doesn’t let up even when she plugs her ears. But Gwen is lifting her hands in the air, gesturing widely, and the din quiets. Then Dax lifts his voice, barking something out.

Sullenly, uneasily, the crowd silences.

“Good to see everyone’s here,” Dax says. There’s a quaver in his voice, and Anya wraps her arms around her elbows, clutching them tight. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to hear this.

“What if he’s dead?” Lavi had asked. “What if he’s dead, or - or - worse?”

But it hadn’t been a question, had it?

“We need to do a full headcount. I know we’ve been lax about the buddy rule, but - from now on, no one goes anywhere without someone else with them. If you’re at the store, you stick with someone. If you’re at school, you stick with someone. If you’re at home -”

He laughs, sour. “I guess you’re fucked,” he says, “but we can at least call. Do check-ins. No solo missions to the Maze. If it’s got to do with - any of this - you stay together. Got it?”

There’s the high fluting of someone’s voice, pitched like a question. Anya can’t make it out, but she can see Marie’s face twist into something bitter, and Gwenna lifts a hand. “No accusations, please,” she says. “We’re in this together, okay? All of us. We don’t think -”

“You think Sydney was just, like - bad luck?” someone calls out, deeper this time. They’ve got thick glasses, and pitch black eyes, darker even than Marie’s, but Anya doesn’t know their name. “We knew CHORUS knew! She wasn’t even at home, and then you’re saying she was in the Maze? When she was being careful? Someone must have said something, or gotten to her -”

“No one did this,” Dax says, “except for CHORUS. We’re not worried about spies. This isn’t - this isn’t a Itachi and Naruto type situation. This is -”

“Sydney was bad luck,” Marie slides in, her voice smooth and flat. “Real bad luck. We should’ve moved quicker. We didn’t. But - this is - Tommy’s issue is that Tommy got too big for his britches, and he decided he didn’t need back-up. Just like Bells.”

Gwenna jolts. Dax turns to look at Marie, eyes wide, but her mouth’s a thin slash, and she jerks her chin up. She’s smaller than the both of them, in build and in height, but she looks steadier than either as she says: “We all need backups, os moleques. When we go at this alone, that’s when we end up these messes.”

Everyone starts talking at once.

“It’s not about back-up,” Glasses is arguing, furious. She’s stepping forward in front of the other two, her shoulders squared. “It’s about trust! Sydney was being careful. She didn’t go down there herself -”

“That’s not important,” someone says, and it takes Anya a minute, but she recognises Martha’s nasal voice, even softer than it’s ever been in the boxcar. “She’s down there. Okay. What matters, dude, is what they’re doing in the Maze. They’ve got Sydney. They’ve got Tommy -”

“We don’t know they have Tommy,” someone else says, sharp, and it’s hard for Anya to sort out the words from the noise. There’s so many damn people talking, but she doesn’t want to just plug her ears, or walk away. She wants to know.

It’s just hard, when there’s sound battering her at every angle.

It’s like being caught in a river, she thinks. The sound keeps pouring over her head like a battering ram, a volley of words too strong to sort through. She picks up a phrase here, a word there - but they don’t make sense, not when they’re coming from a dozen different mouths, all tripping over each other.

There’s nothing to focus on here.

When Xaviul’s voice cuts through the morass, it feels like a rope. She can’t see him in the crowd, but she knows Xaviul’s voice better than she knows her own. It’s something to grab onto.

“What we need to think about,” he says, “is - we’ve always had runaways, right? Or..” Xaviul laughs, dry. He’d said this to her, once, all the way back in August. Anya knows what he’s going to say next. “Our parents said they were runaways. But they’re saying Sydney ran away. And they’re saying Tommy ran away, now, too.

"What if there’s never been runaways? What if CHORUS’s just been taking them? Or what if..” There’s kids craning their necks in the crowd. Anya can’t see Xaviul. He’s sitting, she thinks, among the mass, but she can see the other kids hands as they sign: the ripple of motion that goes throughout them, the flick of hands as the nearest ones explain to their friends, and the farthest ones away, the ones nearest to Anya, ask:

Speak-as-One?

“.. what if They’re taking them, instead? Maybe Sydney, or Tommy, or Bells, just went to bed, closed their eyes.. and they started to sleepwalk?”

All the way back in August, long before she’d learned of the club, Anya had seen her first Lucid. She hadn’t known it at the time, but they’d been Xaviul’s mother, leading a group of children through the streets. The children had been in a blackout. They’d been sleepwalking, kept in order only by her firm guidance, and she’d been taking them to.. somewhere.

Anya had never found out where.

But it hadn’t been somewhere good, she thinks. And the lucid - Xaviul’s ma - had brought them out of the Maze, and she’d watched them like a brooding hen. It wasn’t just to lead them. They’d followed her as easily as ducklings. It’d been because, mind-controlled or no, they were still asleep. Their eyes had been closed, and the maze was full of dangers.

Anya’s grandfather had warned her against ever snooping around in the mines, when he was still around. It might’ve been because of the Maze, she thinks, but it didn’t have to be. There were so much worse things in the dark.

“If anyone’s in the Maze, sleepwalking,” Anya says, raising her voice so that it’s hawk cry clear, “then he’s dead.”

She’d expected the crowd to go quiet. They did, often enough, when she spoke. But Anya hadn’t anticipated the way that everyone would turn to look at her, or the way she stood out from the crowd, nearly head and shoulders above most of the other kids. There’s dozens of sets of eyes on her. Anya’s never been looked at by this many people in her life, she thinks, and she doesn’t like it now.

But Marie had stood strong on the stage, her chin up, her eyes steely, when she was speaking. So Anya wets her lips and holds up her chin, firm, her shoulders squared like she’s ready for a fight.

It comes. “He’s not dead,” someone says near her, and the dam breaks. There’s a dozen voices, all chiming over each other: he wasn’t dead, and how could she say that, and why would she jinx it like that? Plenty of them had sleepwalked. No one had ever ended up dead. The Lucids would never let them end up dead. Bells had gone into the Maze, and she hadn’t died -

“We have to accept that Bells might be dead,” Gwenna says, flat.

Dax turns to look at her. “Gwen,” he hisses, and ain’t it queer, that’s the sound that carries to Anya? But maybe it’s because Marie’s looking at Gwenna too, her eyes wide and wounded.

Their voices fall, then, as Gwenna turns to face the other two. Anya can see their lips moving, but they’re too far to see the words. And there’s too much of a distraction all around her. The rest of the kids are still yammering, not so much at Anya as they are at everyone. The crowd’s getting rowdier with each passing moment, and with it, the noise’s increasing.

Each time the voices pitch up, it feels like needles in Anya’s ears. Her mouth’s dry again. She made her point, she thinks. She said something, at least, and that means she ain’t gotta stay any further. She’s heard what Dax and Gwenna and Marie had to say. She can just slip on back from the crowd.

So she does, one step at a time. The only thing that makes her pause is that Lavi’s still in the thick of it, their blue curls invisible among the tangle of bodies. Xaviul’s in there, too, and he’s apt to start looking for her, if he hasn’t already. And if Astro ain’t with the two of ‘em, she’ll spit. If the whole lot of them are looking for her.. or they want to talk..

It isn’t sorrow, exactly, in Anya’s chest at the thought of Tommy being missing. There’s a lot of things there, but unhappiness just can’t quite one of them, not when he spent so long shaking her chain for a reaction. But the others had been closer to him. Him and Marie had been friends, of a sort, and Marie’s eyes had been just as rheumy as the rest when she’d taken to the stage.

Anya had talked and talked and talked, after she’d left her ma. It ain’t the same kind of pain, she thinks, to lose a friend - but her ma’s alive, and well, and Anya could see her at any point that she’d like. Tommy might be gone. Xaviul had listened to her, when she’d been shaken. She wants to listen to the others, if they need it.

It’s the sort of thing, she thinks, that friends do.

So she can’t bring herself to slip away into the trees entirely. Instead, she dawdles near the edge of them, back enough from the crowd that she can feel the air in her lungs, and she waits for one of the club’s leaders to call things to order.

Anya doesn’t have to wait long.

Whatever furious conference the lot of them were having resolves sooner than later. Gwenna’s cheeks are red by the time they straighten up, and Marie’s face is pinched, hard, like she just bit into a lemon. She climbs down off of the boxcar with such fury that Anya thinks, for a moment, that she’s going to stalk away into the crowd and leave them all behind entirely. Maybe Gwenna thinks the same thing, because she reaches out for Marie’s shoulder, before Dax nudges her.

Gwenna drops her hand.

Marie’s small, but she doesn’t disappear into the crowd the same way that Lavi does: the kids part around her to an extent, in the same way they always did for Tommy. She’s not heading towards the back of the crowd, the way Anya thought. Marie veers towards the side with a furious kind of focus, like one of the housecats stalking a bird through the fields. When the crowd thins, Anya sees where she’s heading.

The boxcar is surrounded with trees. Most of ‘em aren’t fit for climbing: they’re firs, long and thin, with no real branches to hold. But there’s a basswood near the boxcar, one that must nearly be as old as the town itself, because its branches are long and handsome, and perfect for a child’s hands. Marie scrambles up it with ease, like she’s done it a hundred times before, for all that Anya’s never seen her with her feet far off the ground.

Then she flings herself onto the boxcar roof.

She hits it with a clang long enough that Anya feels it, and as she’s pulling herself up to her feet, the sound’s still echoing. The sound of the crowd’s dimmed, as all the kids turn to look at her. But it’s not silent.

Marie slams her foot into the boxcar. It rings out, strong as a bell, and when the crowd hushes still, she does it again. Dax and Gwenna are flinching below her, Dax’s hands clamped over his ears, Gwenna’s face twisted into a grimace.

Martha doesn’t stop. She slams her foot one more time, her full weight going into it, and the bang of the boxcar’s loud enough that Anya flinches with it.

When the echoes clear, this time, the boxcar’s silent. Silent enough that Anya can hear Gwenna snarl:

“Are you for fucking real?”

“Shut up, girl,” Marie fires back, but there’s a warmth to it. She keeps that warmth as she turns to look at the crowd. And maybe that’s why, Anya thinks, they stay quiet, every kids eyes fixed on her like flowers towards the sun. “And for the rest of you! Settle down and listen up, yeah? Because I know we’re all scared shitless here - hopefully not literally, remember, we don’t have showers out here - but -

“If we don’t keep our heads,” she says, firm, “we won’t have to worry about Tommy, kiddos. We won’t have to worry about where they’ve taken Sydney, or Bells, or anyone else - because they’ll round us all up, and they’ll take us there. D’you know why they haven’t? ‘cause we’re working together, and because we’ve got help.

“It feels scary, and it is. But we’re not in this alone,” she says. “We have each other. And more importantly..” She lifts her hand up. Marie’s face is angled up. The sun is setting off in the distance: the light that dapples across her features is all purples and reds that make her look a little strange, standing up there. It makes her look so much older.

She sighs. “Que deus me perdoe,” she says, wry. “We have help from above. No matter what happens, meus queridos, we must have faith. The Voices have led us this far. They’ve kept us safe, haven’t they? Bambi -” She points to someone out in the middle of the crowd. The kids peel away, instinctively, like Marie’s attention is something that can be caught - and Anya sees Bambi, wide-eyed and worried, in the hole that’s been created around her.

She looks to the left, and then to the right, towards the friends that were once there. Her cheeks flush. Then she looks at Marie, biting her lip. “Hi,” Bambi says weakly. “Um. Hi, Marie.”

“When you were out on watching,” Marie says, “and Mr. Yannovitch grabbed you, what happened?”

Bambi looks as if she’d rather the ground swallowed her up than answer Marie’s question. When she opens her mouth, her voice squeaks. But she clears her throat. When she tries again, her voice’s a little stronger. “Laugh-Last helped me,” she says. “He said to kick him in the - the -” She swallows. “Nads.”

“Good ol’ Laugh-Last,” Marie says, dry, and then she turns. “Archer! When you were stuck in the Maze, and the door to Signal Relay dropped, what did The-Measure-Cuts say?”

Archer’s more prepared. “To look at the detritus on the keypad,” he says immediately. “Because the numbers that they use the most often are smudged, so it’s just a matter of figuring out the password from those variables, instead of all of them..”

Marie knows every member of the clubs name, it feels like, and she picks them out from the crowd as easily as she breathes. She knows their faces, their names, and most importantly, their stories, and each kid that she calls on has their own tale. The daimons have saved all of them, one way or another. And as she calls on member after member, each with their own story, Anya can feel the mood of the crowd improve.

Everyone had been scared, at the start of things. Tommy’s absence had been a cut through their confidence. But Anya can hear the children nearest to her murmuring, and she can catch the words on their lips. Tommy’s with Thee-I-Dare, one of the girls is saying. It’s fine. It must be fine, right..?

Anya thinks of a blood red theater.

“We’re not in this alone. We’ve got each other, and we’ve got the Daimons. And they’ve done their part,” Marie is saying. “They’ve saved us, over and over. So we just need to do ours. It’s as the Lord said: if we see to ourselves, and we see to our beliefs, then all manner of things shall be well.

"We need to keep faith,” she says. “Things are scary, kiddos, and it’s going to get scarier. But we have to believe we’re going to get through this. Because if we don’t - if we think we can’t - what can the Voices do to help us? What can we do to help each other? We all need to believe, meus queridos. And if you can’t believe in yourselves, or the daimons..”

Marie spreads her hands out in front of her. “Then believe in me,” she says. “And believe in Dax, and believe in Gwenna. We’re your friends, and we’re going to get through this. All of us. Okay?”

Everything’s silent in the clearing.

Then Gwenna laughs. “Thank you for the sermon, Hoadley,” she says.

She leans out from under the shade of the boxcar’s doorway, looking up. But then she jolts back real fast, because Marie’s dropping down, hooking her hands into the rim, and swinging into the doorway - right into Dax, who stumbles back into the shadow, staggering under the weight of her. Someone in the crowd gasps.

Then there’s a thud in a boxcar, and a yelp of outrage - and someone right in front of Anya laughs. Then another person. It’s like once it starts, it just can’t stop. The sound ripples throughout the entire crowd, and all in front of her, Anya can see shoulders easing, spines relaxing just a little.

Marie’s rubbing her shoulder as she steps back into the light of the doorway. Dax doesn’t look too pleased next to her. But his irritation softens when he takes in the crowd, and when Gwenna’s gaze skates across them all, for the first time tonight, even she looks a little pleased.

The tension’s lessened in the crowd. Some of the kids drift towards chairs, or settle on the ground, or in the trees - others just leave entirely, after Dax promises that they’ll be sent a summary, and kids peel off in groups of two and three back towards the town. Lavi must be one of those: even when the crowd’s thinned, Anya can’t see heads or tail of them among the crowd. But she does spot Xaviul. He’s settled next to Astro and Cindy, leaning back against one of the trees, right at the front of the pact. When Anya sits down next to him, knocking her knee into his, he grins.

One of the first things that Gwenna tells ‘em all, once they’re all settled again, and nobody in the crowd’s laughin’ at all, is:

Archer had been the last person to see Tommy.

And Archer steps out of the crowd.

He stands in the boxcar’s entrance next to the three leaders, nearly head and shoulders above all of ‘em in height. His shoulders are hunched, but his voice’s clear and solid despite it. “Um. So. The last place I saw Tommy,” he says, “was a few days ago. When we were exchanging notes. There were maze entrances out in the woods, ones that the Lucids like using..”

“Like the graveyard,” Anya murmurs to Xaviul, and he nods.

Archer’s got a meandering kind of way of talking, easy to get lost in, but Astro’s writing notes next to her, and Xaviul murmurs the gist of it, whenever Archer goes on for too long.

According to Archer, he and Tommy had spotted some of the Lucids using one of the more scenic entrances: a place in the cliffside that’d opened up to a sheer drop below, where they’d set up a table and a cooler. “Full of Mountain Dew,” Archer jokes, and laughter spreads in a soft ripple through the crowd.

Archer and Tommy had thought about going to the cliffside, but they’d decided to bring it back to the headquarters, instead. Dax had his own studies, and it’d made sense - but Tommy had thought he’d seen one of the placards down there. So he’d sent Archer back to the headquarters.

Tommy had stayed behind. He’d texted Archer, later, to say that he’d gotten it, and he had something to tell him the next night, and he was excited.

But Tommy hadn’t come school the next day. He hadn’t come to the boxcar, and chances were, Archer thought, he might not’ve ever gone home at all.

Dax’s mouth is a thin line as he thanks Archer, and his eyes are steely as he turns towards the crowd. “I think I speak for all of us when I say: cliffs officially off limits,” he announces, and beside him, Gwenna and Marie nod. “In fact, we’re going to go over the maps, and that entire area of the woods? We’re staying the fuck out. Any of the Lucid entrances down there? They’re dead to us.

“We don’t want anyone going out tonight. No missions, no snooping, nothing. Go home, look normal, and let’s not give CHORUS any reason to pay attention to any of us, okay? No texts. No calls. Tonight, we’re all going to pretend to be perfectly normal, because I know we all want to go out and rip up the Maze, but that’s what they expect us to do.

“So we’re staying low. But we’ll stay busy,” he says, and Anya can’t tell if the way he bares his teeth is a smile or a grimace. “Xaviul, Lavi, Audie, Wayne, Joyce -” He rattles off names of more club members that Anya doesn’t know, but she can see their hands bobbing up in the crowd as he lists each off.

“Groups of four, people. You’re our eyes in the sky, okay? Poke around town. "Check their lockers at school. Chorus’s already been through them, let’s be real.. but maybe there’s something there. They don’t actually know what we’re up to, they just think they know, so they might’ve overlooked something. I don’t know. We have to check.” He drags a hand through his hair, exhaling, and Gwenna steps forward.

“Ask questions,” she says, “but quietly. You’re concerned about your friend, but that’s just because we’re kids, not because there’s a fucked up cult.” She’s got the ghost of a smile on her face, but it dies quickly. “Cindy, Bambi: get up here after, okay? We’ve got a special mission for you. And everyone else, remember: I know it’s super tempting, but don’t touch the fucking houses. Tommy or Sydney’s. Tommy’s parents are Sleepers, but we all know they’re going to be watching the building.

"And Sydney’s dad is a Lucid,” she says. “He’s probably got the entire place rigged with home security, just for this. Sydney disappearing.. it sucks. It really, really sucks. But they know that, and they’re using it. If her parents try to talk to you, we need to be worried. Because the only people that know what happened to her, probably, are them.”

“Anya and Bambi. Klaus and Martha. Loreto and Jacob. You all are going to be searching the woods tonight..”

The rest of the meeting goes on like that. The crowd quiets, lulled by the authority of the club’s old guard, as Gwenna and the others rattle off the assignments. There’s so many names she doesn’t know, but she can put faces to ‘em, when they call out like this. And by now, she thinks, she’s starting to recognise the faces. Some of the kids say that the club feels like their family, when they can’t trust their own.

Anya doesn’t think that way. But she’s starting to recognise the faces, and more importantly, she finds that she wants to.

And when Gwenna tells them, at the end of their meeting, that it’ll all be fine -

Anya finds she wants to believe that, too.

* * *

“This isn’t fine,” Xaviul murmurs. “I’m sorry, but if Lavi doesn’t stop being such a stalker, I am going to drown them in the river.”

Perched on the edge of the hunting hide, Anya just nods. Her legs are tucked up away from the hole, and the rope ladder’s sitting in a coil right by her knees. The trunk here’s too smooth to be truly climbable; the handholds in the bark are made for squirrels, not people. There’s no way for Lavi or anybody else to get up in the hide with ‘em, not unless they went and brought out a ladder.

Still, she ain’t risking anybody seeing her legs hanging low. She’s watched this hide for the past month straight, and ain’t ever seen anyone come by, but.. Anya’s less worried about hunters, and more about pests.

Dealing with Lavi, who could blame her?

“Are you sorry?” she asks, dry. “‘cause I wouldn’t be.”

It’s nice hanging around just Xaviul, the way that she used to. Anya’s grown used to the rest of the kids. She’d go so far as to say, she thinks, that she wants to be around ‘em, more oft than not: maybe not everyone, all at once, but there’s a queer, new kind of lonesomeness that dogs her whenever she drifts too far from the others. There’s something nice about having folks around, that’s all, when she knows all of ‘em like her, and wonder what she’s up to when she’s away.

But Xaviul had been her first friend, and her truest, in more ways than one. Anya doesn’t have to go guessing about what he wants, or what he thinks, or what he might be doing. She just knows, often, and he knows her, too, warts and all.

“It feels mean,” he says now, letting his head thunk back against the wood. “It sounds mean. Or like we’re picking on them? But I just - I know why Marie keeps teaming us up with them. I do! But they don’t always need to be touching us.” He rolls his eyes, grimacing. “Or calling me Xavi.”

And that’s why Anya can get away with laughing at him. She lolls to the side, propping herself on her elbow and letting her hand squash her cheek flat. Xaviul just looks so fed up, in a way he almost never gets. “They said it rhymes,” she points out, just to watch him sigh, hard enough that his shoulders heave with it.

“They keep saying that! I think they just say things sometimes,” he complains. “Or always. Xaviul is - it’s an ay sound, and they’ve got an uh sound, but did you know they got Klaus calling me Xah-vee-ell, like we’re twins or something? They’re three years younger than me! They’re a foot shorter. It’s so obnoxious.”

He sighs again, pressing a hand to his face. “You know what? I am going to drown them,” he says, like he’s admitting some great crime. “People won’t get it at first, but then they’ll figure it out, and they’ll throw me a parade. Maybe they’ll make me the new club president.”

“Maybe they’ll make you club king,” Anya offers.

“Anya, we’re a democracy. We can’t just have kings. Unless we had a mutiny, and got rid of the bourgeoisie,” he says, peering thoughtfully at her through his fingers, and then the conversation shifts towards revolutions, and the French, and a dozen other things that Anya loses track of almost as quick as he says ‘em.

It’s fine. She learns a lot just from listening to Xaviul. And they balance each other, she thinks. He ain’t comfortable in the woods the way that she is, or even in the boxcar. He’s always worrying about something or another. But for all the knots that she knows how to tie, and for all that she can climb higher without so much as balking, Xaviul’s the one that knows things.

He knows about school, and history, and teeth, but most of all, he knows how folks work, in a way that Anya just doesn’t get. So she lets the conversation drift along, lazy as the river, before she winds it back with:

“Me ‘n Lavi - we’re friends now.”

Xaviul pauses midword, raising his eyebrows. “Huh,” he says. “Really?”

Anya nods. But he’s waiting, like it needs an explanation, and.. maybe it does. The last month or so, she’s made a lot of friends. Lavi, she didn’t ever expect to be one of them.

And if she’s honest..

Saying they’re friends ain’t quite the truth, but it’s not fully a lie, either. “Or somethin’ like that,” she allows. “They ain’t..” The words aren’t coming. But when she can’t figure out what to say, she thinks, it’s just ‘cause she’s overcomplicating it. She just needs to cut to the core of it.

So she says: “- they cried on me.”

Xaviul looks at her, his eyes unreadable.

“Well,” he finally says, “then I guess Lavi’s friends with a lot of people, huh?”

“Friends with half the boxcar.” She shrugs. “They’re sad about Tommy,” she says. “Didn’t know they were close, but..”

“They weren’t. Tommy’s sixteen, and they’re.. thirteen? They’re probably upset.” A beat. “We’re all upset,” he says, careful. “But it’s not like they were friends. It’s..

“You know they’re kind of fake, right?” Xaviul reaches for one of the boxes of snacks. He’s taken to eating them more and more, the longer he spends out in the woods with her and the rest of the boxcar kids. Part of Anya kind of wonders what his ma must think.

The rest of her’s just pleased, in a mean kind of way.

“They want people to like them,” he says, pulling open a bag of chips. “And they act really, really nice, so you will. But they like to lie. A lot. They just act nice.” He snorts. “Or pathetic! Whatever they think will work.”

Lavi had told her that everyone lied, back when they’d first met. So it’s not a surprise, exactly, to hear it. It’s just..

“Why?” she asks, grimacing. “They ain’t got any need to.”

“I don’t know.” For a moment, there’s just the rustle of plastic, and the crunch of chips. “Because they’re awful,” he says, amused, and then: “Or it gets them what they want.”

It’s a queer thought. Lies always stick to her teeth like sap. Even the thought of ‘em makes her feel guilty, but Lavi..

“They told me their pa’s from New York,” she says, shifting to stretch out her legs. The sun’s shifting in the sky, casting thin rays of light all across the wooden boards. One catches on Xaviul’s face, flaring bright across his cheekbone, and Anya touches her own, idle. Her ma’s got a big, square jaw, and the sort of cheekbones that sit high and flat, but Xav looks more like her in that than she does.

Maybe she’ll grow into it, when she’s a little older. “But Marie said that ain’t true,” she adds, because Xaviul’s eyebrows are going up.

“Yeah, no, absolutely not,” he says, pausing midbite. “Lavi’s dad is..” He pauses, looking up towards the ceiling. “Jebediah Goldfinch? They’re one of the founding families. You’ve never been down on Hoadly Street, but that’s all the way at the bottom of the town, near the state route, and Hoadley’s Leap.”

Anya doesn’t know all the creaks and crannies of Redacre. The town’s big enough that there’s places she still hasn’t been, and has never seen, not even when her grandpa brought her in to visit his friends. But she knows a little. “Hoadley’s Leap ain’t downtown,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

“I mean, he probably didn’t kill himself there,” Xaviul says. “Or. I hope he didn’t? But we’ve got a cliff there, and they call it the Hoadley Leap’s scenic overlook. And..” Anya’s face is doing something, because he takes one look at it and falters.

But she can’t put a name on the emotion churning in her chest. “You’re saying that folks went and looked at a cliff,” she says, slow, “and said somebody died here, and they turned it into a spot to go and have picnics? So you can look over the edge and think about death, while you’re eatin’ your chips?”

Xaviul looks down at his bag of chips.

Then, with a shrug, he takes another bite. “Don’t blame me,” he says. “Blame our parents. Or Lavi’s. There’s a statue down there, by the Hoadley’s Leap sign -”

“There’s a sign?”

“There’s a statue down there,” he repeats, “down by the sign, for one of the wars? The Goldfinches put it up, like.. thirty years ago. Orly and Levi Goldfinch, Habibi and Fatiya Shaw, Maria and Juan Gonzalez, Jordan and Jeremy Smith, Zhang San.. I don’t remember the rest. But their dad isn’t from New York. Their dad’s been here forever.”

“That’s what Marie said,” she says, and maybe she ought to let the conversation drop there.

She should, she thinks: there’s no maybe to it. But there’s been a thought that’s been niggling since that night, one that she ain’t sure what to do with. There’s a lot of things that Anya doesn’t get. She doesn’t like asking about them, mostly. It doesn’t feel like her business, like when Martha and Cindy were joking about Tommy, or even when Marie goes mooning after Gwenna. They’re not her business, and so she doesn’t touch ‘em, not at all.

Except Marie had made it her business, in a way. And Anya doesn’t like talking about these sort of things, but..

Xaviul’s always been patient, when it comes to the things she doesn’t know. He’s always tried to explain things, and make it to where she could know, if she wanted.

Anya doesn’t know if she wants to, exactly. But she finds herself saying, all the same:

“Marie said I’m racist.”

Xaviul blinks at her.

“Uh,” he says. “Why?”

“‘cause Lavi said their pa was from New York,” she says, slow, “and I thought they were being truthful about it. And..”

There’s a stranger thought, here, one she doesn’t know what to do with. For a moment, Anya considers just dropping it entirely. It’d be easy. If she balked, then Xaviul wouldn’t push. He didn’t ever push her much, when it came down to it.

But it feels too close to lying not to.

And maybe she wants an answer.

“She thinks I’m..” Anya twists her mouth to the side. “I dunno,” she says, then: “- nah, I know. It’s - she thinks -”

Xaviul’s watching her, waiting.

“She thinks I’m white,” she says, finally, and the words feel strange.

Anya knows race is a thing. Lavi’s people are from India, and from Redacre, seems like. Xaviul’s folks come from somewhere off on the coast, and she knows, ‘cause she’s heard him tell the stories, and she’s seen some of the pictures he’s got tucked away on his phone. Tommy’s pa is from somewhere eastern, and so’s Marie, but farther, farther back, and Martha’s chattered about how her ma’s family came over on the Mayflower, and has the certificates to prove it.

Anya never saw much use for school, but she remembers making wigwams back when she was real young, and learning about Thanksgiving. She knows that’s how most folks came over: on boats, centuries back, over from Europe, or Africa, or wherever else they started off at. And she knows her folks have been here, for time immemorial, living in these same-old woods.

She knows it, but - she’s never given it any real thought, before now.

Xaviul clicks his tongue. “Marie.. is a dick,” he says, slow, watching her. “And dumb, sometimes. She didn’t think I was native when she first saw me, either.” Xaviul smiles, but it’s thin. “Paper bag test, I guess. Everyone’s darker in Brazil. Even though she isn’t.”

Anya doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but she can catch the gist of it. Xaviul ain’t pale pale, but he’s not like Lavi, either: he’s somewhere neatly between her and them, with skin that matches the teak of some of the trees outside. She’s never looked at him and thought about what he was. She’d just seen he looked near enough to her ma, and her grandpa, and hadn’t paid it any mind past knowing they were kin enough to matter.

“Huh,” Anya says, chewing on her lip. It’s just another thing she’s missed, Anya thinks, and that all the other kids had learned to pay mind to. Another little part of the language that they all spoke, and that she was still struggling to pick up.

Every time she thinks she’s getting it, something reminds her that she ain’t getting it at all.

“Marie’s Brazilian,” she says, but it’s more of a question.

Xav shrugs. “She’s from Brazil,” he says, “but she’s Japanese. Didn’t you notice -” He pauses. “Well. That’s why Tommy likes - liked - um -”

“Likes pickin’ on her,” Anya says, picking up the words, and he nods.

Then Xaviul twists his mouth to the side. “And it’s why she’s such a try-hard,” he adds, and.. Anya wants to ask, almost, what he means, but it already feels like there’s a gap in the room, between the things he thinks she ought’ve noticed and the things she hasn’t. It’s a raw kind of discomfort, and the more she looks at it, the more uneasy she gets. Anya’s used to feeling a little lost, when it comes to the other kids, but she ain’t used to getting that kind of feeling from Xaviul.

He’s trying to fix it, though. He’s explaining, and..

She can be unhappy with it, she thinks, or else she can meet him in the middle. He’d said, when it came to her temper, that it was important to try. Maybe it’s important, here, too. “With her Spanish,” she says, and Xaviul nods.

“It’s not super natural,” he says, dry, “but she doesn’t want us to forget she’s Brazilian. I guess Tommy got a bee up her ass over it. Kind of understandable. No one likes being judged, but.. doesn’t stop her from judging, does it?

“It’s silly.” He shrugs. The bag of chip rustles with the movement, and he looks down at it, surprised, like he forgot it was there at all. “She shouldn’t be picking on you, though. D’you want me to talk to her? Because I will. Because projection isn’t cool. Just because she’s getting picked on doesn’t mean she gets to be Tommy Jr.”

“.. maybe,” she allows. Xaviul’s got a way with words. He’ll phrase it nice, and he’ll get to the point, better than she would. Than she could. “It’s just.. I always figured I was dark, compared to my ma, and my grandpa.” Xaviul’s seen ‘em. Her ma’s known well enough around town, and Anya’s brought pictures of her grandpa out before, little snapshots that her ma keeps in a binder in one of the drawers. In her memory, her grandpa was always as pale and bleached as her ma. Even in the pictures of when she was a baby, and he and her ma were both young, his hair was the same rusty blonde.

Anya’s hair is dark against her shoulders. Her skin’s always two, three shades deeper then the rest of her kin, and even right now, in the heart of October, her tan’s clinging to life. But when she holds up her hand, thoughtful, her skin’s still lighter than Xaviul’s face.

“But I ain’t,” she says. “Am I?”

If she had to guess, this ain’t a conversation that Xaviul’s awful keen to have, either. He looks uncomfortable, mouth twisting to the side, his shoulders up. But he doesn’t balk, for all that he could. “Not very,” he says readily. “But you don’t need to be. Your mom’s paler. And she’s still Monacan, and so are you.”

And there’s the discomfort.

She hadn’t been able to place it at first, but her face heats, all at once. 

Now he falters. “What?”

Monacan. She’d told Lavi that she was Moccasin. Was it such a wonder that her ma had told her it wasn’t none of her business? She couldn’t even get the name of it right.

She wasn’t even enough to count.

“My ma is,” she says. “But -” There’s a lump in her throat. She should’ve told him right from the start, but she hadn’t thought about it, not like this. But shouldn’t she have?

There’s a lot of things she ought’ve thought about before, and just never struck her at all. “I’m,” she says, but her voice catches, and the rest of the words won’t come at all.

Xaviul leans forward. He takes a hold of one of her braids, gentle, but the yank he gives it ain’t nearly as nice. “Anya,” he says, half a scold. “You doofus.” It’s hard to swallow. Her face’s just getting redder and redder, and if it gets any worse, she thinks, it’ll just burst, like a tomato left on the vine. “Is this about your dad? Because my mom isn’t Passamaquoddy, but my dad is, and I am. Your mom’s Monacan, and so are you.”

He gives her braid another yank, gentler, then lets go. “She was just being mean.” Xaviul says it in the same way he talks about history or science: there’s no doubt to his words, and there’s no hesitation. It’s just firm conviction, like he was saying the sky was blue. “Like Marie. Sometimes.. even our parents are dicks. D’you know anything about your family? Past your mom?”

“Nah.” Anya scrubs at her cheeks. It doesn’t help the heat, but it’s grounding all the same. “I didn’t even know the name,” she admits, reluctant. “My grandpa didn’t mention it much. And my ma.. she ain’t keen on talkin’ about it. How did you know?”

“My mom asked your grandpa about everything, when she and my dad moved here. Last name, tribe.. she was really, um, curious.” He sounds a little uncomfortable, but Xaviul always does, when it comes to talking about her grandpa. Some folks just aren’t comfortable with the dead, Anya thinks, especially when they only know ‘em second-hand. “So she told me about it, when we started talking. Um. I bet she’s got books on it. I’ll see if I can bring some up, and we’ll go over them.”

“My grandpa talked about all that?” Their last name. It’s another one of those things that she’s never thought about, but maybe she ought’ve. “He never told me any of that,” she says, slow. “Or my ma.”

Xaviul exhales. “Yeah,” he says, with a tone she can’t quite read. “Yeah, I’ll bring up some books. It’ll be a good distraction from Tommy, too. Give us something to do.”

He stretches out his legs, and Anya’s twinge in response. She’s been half-curled for this whole conversation, but she hadn’t paid it any mind. Now, though.. with a grimace, she sits upright, stretching out her legs in front of her and leaning forward to stretch her fingers to her toes. Her body creaks in protest, but when she sits up, she feels a little better. A little looser, like the stretch had pulled a weight right off of her chest.

“A distraction from Tommy, and Martha.” Xaviul looks tired, Anya realises suddenly. She hadn’t noticed the bags under his eyes, but.. they all had those, these nights. Did she look any better? “Did you hear about what happened with her yesterday?” he asks.

Anya shakes her head. “I ain’t talked to anybody all night,” she admits. “Not really.”

“She went to sleep,” Xaviul says, “and D-F-U took her out into the woods. She woke up dancing.”

The weight’s back on her chest.

Most of the kids in the club had heard the Voices speak to them. Or at least, they claimed it. Anya had only ever heard one: Dance-for-Us, the daimon who’s only interests seemed to be dancing and energy. Anya had prayed to the Voices, just the once, and she’d been answered.

Dance-for-Us had shrieked in her dreams, calling her by a name that only her ma had known. Anya doesn’t even remember the words anymore, not really, but her hands are a little damp, even looking back on it. It’d been the start of all of this. That had been the moment that everything had changed, and she couldn’t have stayed asleep to the town’s mysteries, even if she’d wanted to.

“It’s scary,” Xaviul says, still talking. “It’s scary, and.. it makes you not want to sleep, right? If anytime we go to sleep, a god can just - steal us away? Hollow out our brains, and slip us on like a flesh puppet?”

“D’you reckon they’re gods?” Anya asks.

“I mean..” He exhales. “I don’t think it matters,” he says. “It’s just a term. Do you?”

“Nah. I ain’t religious.” His bag of chips have been abandoned in his lap for the past several minutes. Anya snags them, and sets upon them. Food’s food, even if he picked the worst flavour. “Don’t see a reason to start now,” she says. “But..”

“But?”

“People are prayin’ to ‘em like gods,” she says. “And sacrificing to them. I ain’t gonna do it. It’s.. they’re in our heads already. Why invite ‘em?” She thinks of Dance-for-Us, hollering away. She thinks of the theater, and Martha’s face, on the body that ended up so twisted, and she breathes out, slow and steady, like that might bank the fire trying to flare up in her core. “You ain’t done that, have you?”

She can see Xaviul turning over the words in his head. He thinks, and she waits. “I’ve been listening to Laugh-Last, sometimes,” he says, “but.. I’m not sacrificing. It’s just -” He pauses. “I’ve been listening. To all the kids that like T-I-D, D-F-Y, D-F-U.. the ones that don’t like anyone. And they’ve all been saying that it doesn’t matter. If you don’t pick one, they’ll just pick you.”

“It doesn’t matter what we do, in the end.” The hunting hide feels a little too warm, listening to him talk. “Either they’re going to be in your head, or.. someone else will be. The same thing that’s in our parents.”

“I had a dream about D-F-U,” Anya says. Her mouth’s dry. The words rasp in her throat, and she abandons the chips, reaches for the box of snacks. There’s a pop in there, sticky and hot from the early fall warmth, but it helps. “Last night. There was a theater, and there wasn’t nobody there, except me.”

“Are you sure it was that kind of a dream?”

“There were two girls on stage,” Anya says, flat. “And one of ‘em was Martha. And they were dancing until -” She thinks of the cracking bones, and of the way the skin pulled tight.

“Until they broke,” she says, flat, and takes another swig of her water. She’s too hot in here. “I think she was tryin’ to talk to me. But I wasn’t listenin’. And I’m not about to start. But.. that ain’t stopping her, is it?”

Xaviul’s mouth is a thin line. “It isn’t,” he says, and his back’s all stiff, his shoulders set. “It isn’t. And that’s the problem. It doesn’t seem like you get to choose if they’re here. Just.. choose which one you get, maybe. And how d’you even pick? It’s a bunch of worms in a barrel, and the daimons - the Voices - they want you infested.

"D’you go with the worm that’s got its own echo chamber? Because they just want to replace your entire brain with the parasite. Do you pick the Adversary? Because, like.. everyone that follows him fucking dies.” His voice’s picking up speed. “We’ve got a daimon who’s whole agenda is right in the name. If you pick him, you’re going to die.

"We’ve got the nerd who’s too busy documenting to ever take a stand, because he’ll roll over for whatever god looks at him for too long. The dancer -” He takes a deep breath. “If you got her worm in your head,” he says, “it’d be like the parasite in moose, the one that makes ‘em just.. run in circles, until they die. Just because she changed her name doesn’t mean she’s not still like that. She’ll have you dancing until you die.

"And one of the worms is just a leech that wants to eat your brain, so, like, that’s great,” Xaviul finishes in a rush.

Xaviul’s cheeks have gone red, and there’s a brittle kind of light in his eyes. His mouth is still pinched tight. But the tension finally drains, just enough, out of his back that he leans back against the wall. “Laugh-Last is, like, pretty much the least scary. He doesn’t care about wars,” Xaviul says, sour, “and he doesn’t care about dying for anyone, and.. everything he says is probably just a lie..

“But it’s like Lavi, probably. They don’t care, either. Apathy’s safe.” He exhales. “Everyone tries to gloss over him,” he says. “Everyone’s got an opinion on the rest, but him.. you just get looks. No one gets in screaming fits over Laugh-Last.” His mouth relaxes, finally, and he almost, nearly smiles at Anya. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but the smile she gives back doesn’t, either. “All you get is side-long looks,” he says. “Are you judging me?”

“A little,” she says. “But..”

There’s a sense to it. And he isn’t sacrificing.

He’d said that. And Xaviul didn’t lie.

“Only a little,” she decides. “It ain’t like you’re wrong. D’you think we ought to go back, now?” The hunting hide’s getting darker and darker around them. It’d been a slow encroachment of gloom, but now it’s finally deepening, the light outside shifting from dusky reds to the familiar, purple haze of nighttime. “Lavi ought to be goin’ home.”

Xaviul looks up at the slats of the hunting hide.

“Nah,” he says. “Let’s stay here a little longer.”


End file.
